4 6 



& 



LETTER 

TO THE 

REV. MR. JACOB GREEN, 

OF NEW-JERSEY, 



Pointing out some Difficulties in the Calvinistic Scheme of 
Divinity, respecting Free Will, Divine Decrees, Particular 
Redemption, &c. and requesting a Solution of them. 



BY HUGH KNOX, 

Minister of the Gospel in the Island of Saba, in the West-Indies* 



Say not that it is through the Lord that I fell atoay; for thou oughtest 
not to do the things that he hateth. Say not thou. He hath caused me to err ; 
for he hath no need of the sinful man. The Lord hateth all abomination 9 
and they that fear God love it not. He himself made man from the begin- 
ning, and left him in the hand of his counsel. If thou -wilt to keep the com- 
mandments, and to perform acceptable faithfulness; he hath set fire and 
•water before thee; stretch forth thy hand unto -whether thou -wilt. Before 
man is life and death; and whether him liketh shall be given him. Son of 
Sirach. Ecclus. 

See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil. 
I call heaven and earth to record against you this day, that I have set be- 
fore yo^f life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that 
thou and thy seed may live. Moses. 



PRINTED BY T. AND J. SWORDS, 
No. 160 Pearl-street 



1809, 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



" The attention of the reader is invited to the following 
treatise. It relates to some religious topics that are fre- 
quently, and with interest, discussed among Christians. 
Mr. Knox, the author, was a Presbyterian Minister, 
and resided for several years in this country, but after- 
wards removed to the West- Indies, and died on the 
island of St. Croix. In the following re-publication of 
his letters, the introduction, and some other sentences 
are omitted, which were not essential to the argument; 
and a note to the introduction is incorporated with the 
letter." 

This treatise was re-published, with the foregoing in- 
troduction, in the Churchman's Magazine. A number 
of copies are struck off in the present form, at the ex- 
pense of that establishment. 

Neiv-York, 1809. 



Letter 



TO THE 

REV, JACOB GREEN. 



Rev. and dear Sir, 

YoUR very kind letter came safe to hand some weeks ago, 
with your printed sermon on u The sinner's faultiness and spi- 
ritual inability for both of which I thank you.********** 
I intirely approve of, and cordially adhere to, that scheme 
of religion which tends to exalt God and humble the creature. 
I think God can never be exalted high enough in the thoughts of ' 
the creature, nor the sinful creature sunk low enough in his own 
thoughts : And if I could imagine that there was any one arti- 
cle in my creed which favoured the opposite, false, abominable 
doctrine, I would tear it off with indignation, and tear away 
that part of my heart which had harboured it. Yet I deem 
sovereignty in God to be an amiable, qualified perfection; and I 
dread to conceive of the Almighty as a proud, partial, caprici- 
ous tyrant, in order to vindicate his independence on the crea- 
ture, or under a pretence of doing this. And yet I cannot help 
thinking, as my mind is now circumstanced, that the Calvinistic 
doctrines of particular redemption, and absolute, unconditional 
reprobation, tend to excite this idea of the ever-blessed God! 

I am so far of Bolingbroke's and his friend Pope's opinion, as 
to believe in a qualified sense of the phrase, that whatever is, is 
right, i. e. just as Gov firesaiv, determined and permitted that 

1 



2 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

it should be ; and that, of all possible plans of a world, he 
adopted one of the best upon the whole. This seems clearly de- 
ducible from the infinite power, wisdom and goodness of God. 
Though I greatly hesitate at that supposition of yours, " that 
God might have made a world of free agents, without a possi- 
bility of their falling into sin." I look on this as implying an 
absurdity. The contrary opinion, besides its evidence from 
reason, clears up or relieves many difficulties in our way of 
conceiving of the divine procedures. Whereas, on the other 
hand, if such an universe could have been made, it will be hard, 
if not impossible, for such creatures as we are, to conceive why 
it should not have been best. 

Our reasonings on the necessity of introducing sin and misery 
into the system, in order to display the divine perfections, I 
conceive are at best very arbitrary and hypothetical; and it 
seems to give little advantage to our idea of the divine benevo- 
lence, to suppose it illustrated by the endless and inconceivable 
torments of millions of rational creatures, on the supposition 
that this could have been prevented by a happy and sinless sys- 
tem. It would be daring, I think, to say, that God had no 
other way of manifesting the glory of his perfections to his 
creatures, than by the eternal misery of a great number of them* 
Wherefore I conceive it safest to suppose (with all reverence 
be it spoken) that God could not (in consistence with his per- 
fections, and the free agency of the creature) make a system 
of free accountable creatures, without the possibility of sin's 
entering into such a s} T stem.* As to the quantum of sin in our 
system, it was doubtless foreseen, permitted, and is wisely over^ 
ruled by God : But I confess I am by no means pleased with 
your way of wording this, viz. " God's -willing, ordering, 
and, in his way, causing this quantum of sin; and this too, as 

* tn your last letter you seem to triumph a little prematurely on what I 
here advance, and ask if this is consistent with a system which tends to exalt 
Gov, and humble the creature? I humbly conceive that it is, Sir. I never 
meant to say^ nor can I think my words imply it, That God could not have 
prevented sin's entering, if he had so pleased: but this would be to destroy 
that freedom which I intended to maintain, by confirming such creatures 
In holiness. Surely you make some difference between Adam's liberty in a 
state of innocence, and that of Abimeleck or any other sinner in the present 
state, where there is a dispensation of preventing restraining grace! Indeed 
I cannot reconcile the system of the greatest bcr.exoler.ee to any other plan, 
than the supposition of such an impossibility. 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, % 



a necessary and glorious display of his holiness /" " Causing 
of sin, in the most qualified sense, seems a very harsh phrase, 
when applied to the God of holiness, and more especially as a 
display of his holiness /" I am still more at a loss to conceive 
how u God's having ordered less sin in our system, would have 
proved him to have been, not a good and holy, but an envious 
being!" 

You have, indeed, in your last letter, in some measure, re- 
tracted these phrases, as sounding harshi though you still seem 
to suppose they express an important truth. This, my dear Sir, 
does but the more confirm me in the suspicion, that a scheme 
of thinking, which requires such language to express it roundly 
and clearly, may be a little dangerous— and does the more at- 
tach me to the supposition advanced above ; " that God could 
not (in consistency with the liberty of the creature) prevent 
sin's entering into the system ; but that, having permitted it, 
upon a clear foresight of all Its consequences, as best upon the 
whole, rather than not to produce such a system, he is deter- 
mined to overrule it in such a manner, as wiU give a bright and 
perpetual display of his infinite power, wisdom, and goodness." 

Were I thoroughly and convictively of your sentiments on 
this head, I readily allow that I could not possibly stumble at 
any doctrine of the precurses or concurses of the Calvinists* 
But then, according to my present way of conceiving of these 
matters, I should have insuperable difficulties about the doc- 
trines of a judgment to come, and a future state of rewards 
and punishments : Not being able to reconcile God's causing 
of sin, in any sense of the word, with his rectoral justice in 
judging, condemning, and eternally punishing the sinner. And 
hence I should be strongly inclined to fall in with a modern 
Scotch philosopher, who, in his " inquiry into the foundation 
and principles of morals," espouses the doctrine of fate; and, as 
a consequence of this, holds all our moral feelings to be deceit- 
ful, and makes sin an impossibility. 

This, notwithstanding, I well know ; that the gentlemen who 
hold these sentiments, disavow all such consequences, and 
doubtless, see reason, to believe as they do. While I am cha- 
ritably and firmly persuaded of this, and am far from a cer- 
tainty on which side the truth lies, I earnestly pray that God 
may so enlighten, enlarge and sanctify my understanding, ar*4 



4 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

direct my inquiries, as that I may be led into all important and 
necessary truth. Sure I am it would be highly criminal in me 
to embrace such a doctrine, while I continue to view it as in- 
separably connected with such dreadful consequences ; as such 
a belief, in my present circumstances, must unavoidably excite 
in my mind a most disagreeable and unworthy idea of the Su- 
preme Being. I can conceive of the devil as a most envious, 
malicious, revengeful spirit, replete with every malignant dis- 
position, and wholly bent upon defacing the glory of the divine 
workmanship, and involving his more happy fellow-creatures 
in the same circumstances of guilt and misery with himself: 
But could I believe him endued with creating- power, and 
making a world of rational immortal creatures, I know not 
whether my worst idea of him could induce me to believe him 
capable of causing' these creatures of his to sin, and of punishing 
them for so doing, with eternal torments, 

I am very far from believing that sin is a merely fortuitous 
thing in our system ; or that it entered into it beside the know- 
ledge, or against the will of the Creator. I firmly believe that 
God clearly foresaw and deliberately permitted it, in all its 
multiplied circumstances, aggravations and consequences ; and 
that, in this view, it makes a necessary and very important 
part in the plan of our system. I believe also that it has by the 
wonderfully wise superintendency of God, though directly 
contrary to its own accursed nature and tendency, been made 
to produce much glory to God, and superabundant good to 
many of his creatures. But farther I dare not say at present* 
I believe it to be, in some sort, a necessary and unavoidable evil 
in the system ; a fatal evil to numbers of God's creatures ; and 
that nothing but infinite wisdom and power could ever have 
extracted one single grain of good from it. And although I 
■firmly believe that all those rational creatures who are, or shall 
be, destroyed by it, are wholly the criminal causes of their 
own destruction, yet I believe them to be so very unfortunate 
and unhappy at the same time, that, could any other plan have 
been fixed upon, whereby sin could have been totally excluded, 
and the free agency of the creature secured, infinite benevo- 
lence would have fixed upon such a plan, in preference to the 
present, or any other where sin must have been admitted. And 
in perfect consistence with this idea of the divine benevolence, \ 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &c. 



9 



think I can conceive how Cod might deliberately permit sin to 
enter into our system rather than not form, such a system; and 
punish impenitent sinners without having any real complacency 
in their misery; so that even the most miserable of all his crea- 
tures shall never have just reason to impeach the equity of his 
procedures. I can conceive that, notwithstanding this permis- 
sion, God need be in no wise the cause of that sin which he is 
determined to punish with eternal torment in his creatures; but 
that sin is wholly the creature of men and devils ; and that the 
misery they shall suffer, is the just and proportionate reward of 
their own evil devices : And, finally, that whosoever of our 
guilty, obnoxious race is saved, he shall be obliged to ascribe 
his salvation wholly to the rich, free and undeserved mercy of 
God in Christ. 

In my present way of thinking, I have not the least doubt of * 
the eternity of hell's torments. Not to mention the precision 
of Scripture in this article, I conceive it infinitely equitable that 
those who have an eternal weight of glory set before them, and 
put within their reach, by the Gospel, should suffer eternally for 
despising and rejecting it. So that, on principles of reason, I 
think I can justify the equity of the eternal punishment of Gos- 
pel despisers, atjeast. But were I to adopt the scheme of uni- 
versal benevolence, upon your principles, and in the extent in 
which you seem to hold it, I think it would stagger me a little 
in the belief of that doctrine. If, by the principle of universal 
benevolence, you mean, " A disposition to promote the greatest 
good of the whole system, as far as the plan of the system will 
admit ;" I readily grant that the misery of a great number of 
the creatures, may consist with the principle of universal benevo- 
lence, in the Creator ; and in this sense, I subscribe to the doc- 
trine. But if you mean that God, having it in his power to 
plan a system wherein sin and misery could not take place, was 
pleased, in preference, to adopt the present, and deliberately 
to cause and introduce a certain quantum of sin and misery for 
the greater good of the whole ; I profess I cannot see how such 
a choice and preference can consist with the principle of uni- 
versal benevolence — unless the effects of this benevolence be sup- 
posed to reach, one time or other, to every individual of such 
a system, and give unto every such individual a surplusage of 
happiness in the whole period of its existence j and this 



6 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev, J. Green y 

ivould lead me unavoidably into tlte scheme of Ramsey and 
the other universal redemptionists. For I think, on this scheme 
of universal benevolence, no single individual of the whole sys- 
tem should be left in a state of endless misery, merely to pro- 
mote and advance the stability and happiness of some other indi- 
viduals. Wherefore I really think it behoved Fresident Ed- 
wards, in a very particular manner, to confute Ramsey 1 ^ scheme ; 
and I shall gladly purchase his book when it appears. I know 
of but one way of getting rid of this difficulty, and that is, by 
supposing that, although God could have made a sinless system 
of free agents in the sense above, yet in no other system than 
the present, could he have given so bright a display and mani- 
festation of his perfections to his creatures ; and that for this 
reason he preferred and adopted the present, though necessarily 
involving multitudes of his creatures in endless misery. But 
this, as I observed above, is a mere begging of the question ; 
seeing it is daring in us to limit the divine wisdom, and impos^ 
sible for us to know that God could not have given as bright a 
display of his perfections to the creatures of a system, into 
which sin and misery could not have entered : besides ; not the 
essential glory, but the universal benevolence of God, is the idea 
to be reconciled with his preference of the present plan. God, 
according to my idea of him, is not a selfish being, who either 
needs or desires to have any of his perfections manifested at the 
expense of his creatures. His chief declarative glory consists 
in the exhibition of his wisdom^ holiness, justice, goodness, and 
mercy; and without an evident display of these, he could not 
i appear glorious to the apprehensions of his rational creatures. 
But to suppose him preferring a system replete -with sin, 
and with the endless misery of numbers of his creatures, merely 
to illustrate two or three of his perfections, when he might 
have planned a system, consistent with the free agency of his 
creatures, from which sin and misery might have been pre- 
cluded, seems utterly repugnant to the above amiable idea of 
the Almighty, and particularly inconsistent with his universal 
benevolence. 

I really believe if any man were able to make this scheme 
consistent with itself, or to cast light on these dark and deep 
things of God, Mr. Edzvards was that man. He was unques- 
tionably an holy man, and he seems to have been d& penetration 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &c. 



7 



and intellect; and it well becomes a person so every way inferior 
as I am, to controvert the sentiments of so great and good a 
man, with the utmost modesty and deference. But I confess 
his doctrine of the will seems to me little else than a doctrine of 
fate. The constant dependence of our choice upon motives 
external or without us; the incontrolable power of these mo- 
tives to produce our choice ; and all these motives so fixed and 
planted by divine determination and providence, as that the 
chain can never be broken, but must infallibly draw with it the 
last link, render men's actions so necessary, that, in my opi- ' 
nion, there can be little room for virtue or vice, for rezvard or 
punishment. The creature does, indeed, in one sense, choose 
very freely ; and yet, in another sense, he chooses fatally, and 
cannot but choose.* Yet, towards the latter end of this book, 
he, very dexterously, gives all these volitions and actions of 
the creature such a moral colouring, as to make them the pro- 
per objects of praise and blame, reward and punishment. Now, 
if the will of a man has no elective, self determining power in 
the choice of objects, but is necessarily and unavoidably moved 
and determined by a train of external motives, so fixed and or- 
dered in the plan of things, as never to fail in determining it ; 
at matters not to me how freely, i. e. spontaneously, the man 
ehooses or refuses the objects that present themselves to him — 
there is certainly no possibility of his choosing or refusing 
otherwise than he actually does ; and I should think it as ab- 
surd to praise or blame, to punish or reward a man for being 
bound at a>stake, as a man thus necessarily determined in all 



* " That mind is said to be possessed of natural liberty, or liberty of choice, 
which is so constituted, as that its volitions shall not be invincibly determined, 
by any foreign cause or consideration whatever offered to it, but by its own 
sovereign pleasure. / 

" If any instance occurs in which the mind can choose no otherwise than it 
does, it is not in that instance naturally free; though it chooses with the 
greatest delight, and executes its volitions without any restraint. 

" A man is said to be morally free when there is no interposition of the 
will of a superior being, to prohibit or determine his actions in any particular 
under consideration. - 

" What some call a liberty of spontaneity, consists merely in choosbtg to per- 
form any particular action. Nor does it at all enter into the question, whether 
we can choose or perform the contrary. But since this is nothing more than 
willing, it does not deserve the name of liberty Vide Dr. Doddridge's posth. 
Lcct. ed. 1st. p. 34, 35, 36. 



I Letter of the Rev. tl. Knox to the Rev. J, Green, 

his volitions : and how to reconcile this with moral and account* 
able freedom, I am utterly at a loss. 

President Edxvards has indeed, in a very logical and laboured 
manner, endeavoured to establish the dependence of human 
choice and volition upon external motives, and to prove the ab- 
surdity and impossibility of the self-determining power of the 
will, and its inconsistence even with common sense, though it 
has been generally thought a dictate of this. And I confess I 
have neither leisure, nor perhaps penetration enough, to disco- 
ver where the fallacy lies in his reasoning. But, while to me 
even greater absurdities and impossibilities seem to follow from 
his scheme, than from that of the self-determining power, I 
must needs suppose some fallacy in his reasoning, and can ne- 
ver adopt a scheme, which, as I conceive of it upon present 
evidence, intirely destroys moral agency. The case is this : 
You and President Edwards seem to me to hold a scheme, 
wherein all things are so fixed, ordered and disposed by a divine 
predetermination and decree, that, by a necessity of consequence, 
they must come to pass — nay, what is much more, that there 
is a proper efficiency and casualty on the part of God, in deter-* 
mining the volitions and actions of mankind, even those that 
are evil : for what less can be meant by God's laying a train of 
motives before these agents, which, as so manv necessary causes, 
must infallibly produce their effects, and bring these volitions 
and actions into existence. This scheme you seem to think 
necessary in order to maintain the supremacy and sovereignty 
of God and the absolute dependence of the creature, and es- 
sential to the plan of the divine superintendency and govern- 
ment. And in order to support this scheme, you produce a 
number of plausible passages of Scripture which seem to coun- 
tenance it; such as " the certain predisposal and predetermina- 
tion of the sufferings and death of Christ, and the blameable- 
ness and guilt of the agents who fulfilled this decree ;— ^-God's 
being said to harden Pharaoh's heart, and his guilt and punish- 
ment in acting in consequence of this supposed divine influence 
or appointment," and the like. Now the difficulty with me 
lies, in reconciling this scheme with the moral perfections of 
God, and the free agency and accountableness of the crea^ 
ture. Could I do this clearly, I should have no objection to the 
scheme. 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &c. 



9 



If Gob exerts any influence, or presents any motive, upon 
which a sinful action of the creature must necessarily follow ; \ 
if, moreover, we suppose this influence exerted or motive pre- 
sented intentionally and with design to produce this sinful action, 
as a necessary and essential part of the divine plan, I cannot 
for my life conceive how the Most High can stand clear of the 
charge of being the proper efficient cause of such sinful action, 
and of the guilt of it (if indeed it could be supposed to have 
any guilt at all) : for according to Mr. Edwards himself, The 
Jirst cause, in every chain of causes, is the proper cause of the 
last effect flowing from such a chain. At this rate I cannot 
conceive of men otherwise than as necessary agents: as wheels, 
weights or pullies in the machinery of the system ; and conse- 
quently as little the proper subjects of praise or blame, reward 
or punishment, as so many pieces of clock-work: nor do I 
know how to reconcile this scheme of thinking with James i. 
13—15, and numberless other plain scriptures* 

Is it absurd and inconsistent to suppose, thai the Almighty 
could endow a rational creature with a power of determining 
his own volitions, without rendering such a creature thereby 
independent on himself ? and, in order to ascertain God's ab- 
solute sovereignty over this free creature, is it not sufficient to 
suppose that he perfectly foresees his free volitions and deter- 
minations ; has him ever perfectly within the reach of his power, 
and can, by proper motives, suited to his rational nature and 
moral freedom, so influence, restrain, direct, or over-rule these 
volitions, as to make the tenor of his conduct comport with 
the general plan and design of his providence ? Can we not 
conceive of God as decreeing or determining to make such a 
world as ours, and such creatures as we are ; and as foreseeing 
by his all-comprehensive knowledge, the free volitions of his 
human creatures, and what course every individual of the spe- 
cies would take, according to their respective natures and cir- 
cumstances ? and can we not conceive of him as powerfully 
and efficaciously predisposing some of them, by proper motives 
and influences, to effectuate the quantum of good he intended - 9 
— and as putting it in the power of others to do good, if they 
chose it ; — yet leaving them such a liberty of choice as he fore- 
saw they ?night, yea, and would abuse, and thereby become the 
instruments of fulfilling the divine counsels by such volitions 

2 



10 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

and actions as are morally evil, and in so doing, become justly 

culpable and punishable P 

Although we acknowledge that God positively determined 
the sufferings and death of his dear Son for the redemption of 
human sinners ; yet can we not suppose that he appointed this 
tragical event to happen in a time and place where he foresaw 
that many would be so desperately wicked, such abusers of 
their liberty, so criminally inattentive to the true character of 
the Messiah as laid down in ancient prophecy, and so blinded 
with prejudices of different kinds, as to reject the holy One and 
the Just, to thirst for his blood, and to take, and with zvicked 
hands to crucify and slay the Lord of Glory ; and thus, with the 
most criminal and blameworthy intention, to fulfil his high de- 
cree ? Does it imply any absurdity or contradiction to suppose 
that the guilty actors in this tragedy ; that Judas, Pilate and the 
Jews, had sufficient motives to zvill and act the very reverse 
of what they did ; and that they had it in their power to com- 
ply with these better motives ; and that their willing and acting 
upon different ones, was the formal cause of their guiltiness 
and punishableness? May we not suppose that many of these 
men, and Pharaoh, had, by grieving the Holy Spirit, whereby 
they might have been sealed unto the day of redemption, out- 
sinned their day of grace ; and that they were become the proper 
objects of divine dereliction, and were justly given over by 
God to a reprobate mind to work all manner of wickedness 
with greediness ; and consequently that God might, consistent 
with his moral perfections, use these creatures, already self- 
fitted for destruction, as instruments to fulfil these his decrees 
— to the doing of which no more seems needful, than that God 
should leave these creatures (being no longer in a probationary 
state, any more than devils J to work their own corrupt zvill, 
and only over-rule them in working it? When a creature has 
out-sinned his day of grace, and is no longer a probationer for 
happiness, what absurdity is there in supposing that he may be 
employed by God, as the devils are, in doing the drudgery (if 
I may so express myself ) of the universe ? 

By this scheme of thinking, if I mistake not, ail the princi- 
pal difficulties in the divine plan may be accounted for, and we 
. shall steer clear of that fatal concatinated chain of motives 
which seems to bear so hard on human liberty and the moral 



an Free Will, Divine Decrees, fcfo 



perfections of God. We shall see how justly the wicked are 
blamed and punished for abusing a liberty which they might 
have used to better purposes; — and how justly Pharaoh and Ju- 
das and Pilate, who might have now been in glory, by comply- 
ing with sufficient motives to virtue, are now gone to their place 
in consequence of their having made a different choice. 

I am highly charmed with that idea of God whereby he is 
represented to the mind as a being of infinite, essential and uni- 
versal benevolence. No scriptural definition of the Supreme 
Being pleases me more than that laconic and expressive one, of 
the beloved Apostle, " God is love ;" or that other more dif- 
fuse and circumstantial one, wherein he is pleased to declare 
his own nature ; " The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and 
gracious" &c. And the psalmist has made such a representa- 
tion of the exertion of this temper in God towards the crea- 
ture, as, in my opinion, justifies the highest and warmest things 
we can say of it. " He is good, and doeth good. The Lord 
Is good unto all, , and his tender mercies are over all his 
works." From this scriptural representation, I think, we 
must necessarily, infer, that benevolence is the prime charac- 
ter of the Deity ; that his goodness spontaneously flows out 
to all the proper objects of it ; that he never made, or could 
make, a creature to whom he did not primarily design happi- 
ness ; and that even all those of his creatures, who, by sin, 
have forfeited all title to his goodness, have been, or will be^ 
under a dispensation of his mercy (the devils perhaps only ex- 
cepted, who having fallen from the highest state of dignity and 
felicity, without a tempter, are' justly reserved in everlasting 
chains under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day J— 
otherwise it will be difficult to ascertain the full meaning of that 
emphatical expression ; u His tender mercies are over all his 
xvorks." 

What you say on this subject is, I think, excellent, and seems 
to imply all that I have advanced. " God existed when nothing 
else did; a being of infinite wisdom or intelligence; infinitely 
happy. His happiness consisting in the infinite rectitude of his 
nature, and the infinite love and delight of himself. — ' God is 
hve. J — Therefore if he exert himself or manifest himself ad 
extra, it must be according to "the infinite rectitude, love and 
benevolence of his nature. If he exhibit himself in creation y 



/ 



12 Letter if the Rev. H. Krwx to the Rev. J. Green, 

and creatures can see him by that exhibition, it must be accord- 
ing to what he is, and not according to what he is not ; that is, 
his exhibitions must appear to the creature, to be in love and 
benevolence ; that is, in the end and issue of all things, they 
must and will appear so, to those who view things as they are. 
Now, as nothing can exist, or take place in being, but upon the 
divine plan and volition from eternity, I must suppose that 
even- thing that exists, was best upon the whole, or the great- 
est display of the divine benevolence." — I, for my part, sup- 
pose so too : but how, my dear Si r, can this idea of God tally 
or comport with that fatal chain of causal motives, wherebv a 
vast number of the fallen race of Adam are inevitably drawn 
into a state of endless misery, for the greater good of the sys- 
tem I If one of these miserable creatures is permitted to u see 
God in this exhibition of him," and his faculties are not sup- 
posed to be totally changed from what they are at present ; can 
he say in truth that God is good unto all ; that he hath been 
good and merciful unto him 3 Is this consistent with the above 
idea of the divine benevolence I Or, can infinite wisdom find 
no other expedient to promote the general good of the system, 
than by ordering and planning things so, that a considerable 
part of it shall, without any dispensation of mercy and proper 
state of trial* be doomed to eternal torments, by an absolute de- 
cree of pretention in a state of hereditary corruption and misery, 
from which they never had it put within the reach of their 
power to deliver themselves, or to be delivered ? Does this 
seem consistent with our natural notions of divine equity* much 
more of his benevolence to all, and those tender mercies of his, 
which are over all his works P Or is it fair and charitable to 
suspect men of want of humility, or holding a system incon- 
sistent with the proper sovereignty of God and dependence of 
the creature, who hesitate to adopt such a scheme of thinking 
as this I Surely we ought to be persuaded, upon the most con- 
victive and infallible evidence, that the soul of man hath no 
self determining power ; no liberty of choosing or refusing the 
objects set before it, before we can be warranted to gvie up, 
with all these, our natural and scriptural notions of God'* rec- 
tor al justice and paternal benevolence to his creature, in order 
to make room for such an idea of the divine sovereignty, as is 
wwmiable in itself, and seems to strike such a fatal blow at the 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, fcfc. 



13 



very vitals of moral agency ! It tends, in my opinion, greatly 
to embarrass and mislead in this dispute, to compare the soul 
of man, in its acts of volition, to inanimate things and neces- 
sary agents, such as chains, scales and balances, moved by 
weights, and the like. What comparison or similitude can 
there be between a material, inanimate machine, and a living, 
active, conscious immaterial substance, bearing the natural 
image of God ? Or how can the mode of agency or operation 
in one of these things, be even illustrated or made more 
intelligible, by the mode of agency or operation in the 
other? Mr. Edwards's doctrine of the necessary connection 
between moral effects and their causes ; i. e. the motives 
which produce them, is indeed an intricate and perplexed piece 
of work ; and here I am apt to suspect the fallacy in his whole 
subsequent reasoning originates : For can it indeed be proved 
absurd to suppose God capable of making a creature, which, 
after its being brought into existence, should be self-moving 
and self-determining; so far the source and cause of its own ac- 
tions, as to render it properly accountable for these actions : and 
this, without supposing the* necessity of its being irresistibly 
weighed down by motives, as a scale is by weights, or dragged 
about hither and thither as a puppet by wires, or a chain by the 
hand of a superior intelligence ? Or, can nothing but such a 
creature as this be supposed absolutely dependent on its Ma- 
ker ; or a proper subject of moral government ? Is it not suf- 
ficient to ascertain the proper dependence of a human soul upon 
God, that he has made it, and given it its powers (one of which 
is a liberty of choice)— that he foresees its free volitions, and 
can and does, control and alter them when he pleases ? And if 
man were such a creature as this, could it be said, with any 
propriety, that man is independent on God ? 

It is to me a very small matter, in this controversy, what 
quantum of evil there is in the universe by the fault of men or 
devils, provided God can be exculpated from the charge of 
having any causality in producing it, and that his ways to man 
can be vindicated : So that he shall appear, to right reason, 
just and holy, true and sincere, in all his dealings and transac- 
tions with his creatures. And to make this appear in a clear 
and unexceptionable light, upon your principles, at the same 
time removing the main objections I have alleged against 



14 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev, J. Green, 

them, will be a proper and satisfactory answer to this letter, 
and will put an agreeable end to the controversy. 

I would here, once for all, beseech you to consider me in 
the humble capacity of a learner in the present controversy, 
and not as a pertinacious disputant wrangling for victory. The 
truth is great, and will prevail. This is my wish and earnest 
desire, both with regard to my own case, and the whole Chris- 
tian Church. If, therefore, in any passages of this letter I may- 
seem to push matters too far, or with too much warmth, I intreat 
you not to misconstrue such passages, either into want of reve- 
rence for the sacred subjects of controversy, or rudeness to you* 
The former I dread 2nd. abhor ; of the latter I hope you would 
not suspect me. I have such a firm persuasion of your piety , 
and such a respect for your judgment and candour, as will, I 
hope, ever keep me at the greatest distance from uncharitableness, 
cither in thought or language. Besides ; there breathes such a 
spirit of kindness and goodness through all your letters, as se- 
cures both my affection and gratitude. I highly venerate men 
©f worthy character, though of different sentiments ; believing 
they may all be right in fundamentals, or innocently mistaken 
in non-essentials : but I can call no man master, save Christ 
alone. Great names, great abilities, or even great piety and 
grace can be of little weight with me, in forming my religious 
sentiments, so long as I continue to believe that no mere man 
is infallible in his judgment. If, therefore, I shall be thought 
in this letter, to have pushed some matters as far as they will 
bear, and with some appearance of warmth and attach- 
ment to a favourite system ; it is with design that they may 
appear in the strongest light, and thereby extort from vou 
the more satisfactory eclaircissement. Nor shall I dread to 
see my own opinions set in the most absurd, ridiculous or 
blasphemous light they will bear, provided I may be thereby 
convicted of their falsity and dangerous tendency. 

%r 3c # * * * ^ * ■$£ 

As to vour last printed sermon,* I think it would be, in the 
main, and with some alterations, an excellent one, from a person 

* Entitled " The Sr.irer's Fauhir.ess, and Spiritual Inability;' from Rom. 
ix. 19. Printed at Nev-Tork, 1767. 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &c. 



15 



in my present way of thinking. The distinction between natu- 
ral and moral inability, I have ever thought an important and 
useful one, when well stated and explained. My worthy and ex- 
cellent friend, President Burr, was the first who ever gave me an 
idea of this distinction. He did it in three sermons preached 
from Joshua xxiv. 19. u Te cannot serve the Lord : for he is an 
holy God," &c. He acknowledged they were the substance 
of Mr. Edwards's book relative to that subject, and expressed 
a pretty strong desire of having them printed, as some of 
the most useful and important he had ever preached. All the 
world I suppose are agreed in the idea of natural inability ; 
and were I to define moral inability, it would be in terms 
like these : " A natural and contracted disinclination or aver- 
sion to the exercises of piety and moral virtue, which be- 
comes faulty and criminal by our resisting motives which would 
have overcome it, and wilfully neglecting to apply to God 
through the Redeemer, by prayer and the other instrumental 
duties of religion, for those influences of his Holy Spirit 
(freely offered to all who seek them) by which it would have 
been totally subdued, and our volitions and actions engaged on 
the side of piety and moral rectitude." — But now, seriously, 
on the scheme of a particular redemption (into which, I be- 
lieve you yourself, and all my brethren with you, have gone*) 

* You'll pardon me, my dear Sir, for this mistake concerning your opinion, 
and that of my brethren in your neighbourhood. I made it on a presumption 
that you were thorough Calvinists, in the sense in which that doctrine is 
taught by Calvin, Turretine, Pictete, Witsius, Usher, and other school divines. 
Your sentiments, and those of our brethren, on this article, are very generous, 
catholic, and unexceptionable indeed, and such as I have no objection against. 
You say, (t The most, if not all, your brethren in the ministry, are so large 
in their notions of redemption, that you suppose I would have no controversy 
with them, on that head?' ■■•and that as to yourself, you suppose, you are 
somewhat peculiar, being more an universal Redemptionist than any of them. 
You suppose that your notion of Christ's redemption is more extensive than 
mine. — That Christ's death and atonement was for all the human race. 
His death, you suppose, was not to purchase the love of God, nor the influ- 
ences of the Spirit — but to open a way to save sinners, consistent with Gob's 
justice and holiness — to show the evil of sin, to vindicate Gob's government, 
and the honour of his laws. You suppose also that it was the deobsii~uent 
cause of the Spirit's influences. It was, that the goodness of God might 
flow to any of the human race, without eclipsing the glory of any of the 
divine perfections. By this the way is opened for all mankind to come to 
God, through Jesus Christ. The design of Christ's death,'' you say, 
** may be considered as the same, whether a greater or a smaller number of 
Adam's race be finally saved by him." You declare, in short, " that in your 
view of things, you have no difficulty in saying, that Christ's death and 



t 



15 Letter of the Rev, H. Knox to the Rev. Ji Green, 

I see no propriety at all in this distinction, as held forth to the 
hearers of the gospel in general. I would first point out what 
I take to be an error in your definition of natural inability. 
You say, repeatedly, pages 15, 17, &c. of your sermon, that 
" natural inability is the -want of power, or faculty to do what 
persons have a will to do, what they choose and desire to do — > 
that it always supposes some impediment or insurmountable 
difficulty in the way, where there is a will, desire and heart to 
and for a thing" I think the last clause of this definition, 
printed in italics, should be wholly omitted : For 1 imagine 
that an insurmountable obstacle or a natural impossibility of our 
doing any thing, whether our heart or will be for it, or against 
it, fully constitutes our natural inability of performing that « 
thing, e. g. I am naturally unable to remove a mountain, 

atonement was eqtt ally for all mankind." No universal Redemptionist, not 
even Arminius himself, ever went beyond this. I find, therefore, that I have 
no controversy with you, on this head ; and therefore that part of my letter 
which combats particular redemption, is only permitted to continue in the 
letter, for the sake of those whom I take to be thorough Calvinists in this 
article. I wonder, however, that " you are ready to suppose I misunderstand 
the Calvinistic writers on this head ;" though you grant it " possble that 
there may be a real opposition between them and me." Indeed, Sir, 1 think 
I do not misunderstand them : But least I should be mistaken, I refer the 
candid reader to Calvin's institutions, Turretine, Piciete, and almost all the 
systematic Calvmist writers, on the articles of the divine decrees, predestina- 
tion, election, reprobation and redemption ; also to" Edviards on the Jive points. 
But, my dear Sir, the more you are of an universal Redemptionist, the more 
difficult I find it to conceive of the consistency of your principles. The system 
of the ancient Calvinists is vie 11 jointed, and hangs together, be it right or 
wrong. But to tack universal redemption, m the sense you hold it, to Mr. 
Edvsards's doctrine of the will, and make them consistent, requires, in my opi- 
nion, a great deal of ingenuity indeed. 

Calvi)iism, I find, while it still denominates a sect, has greatly and almost 
essentially changed its nature since Calvin wrote. The generality of the first 
reformers ;n England and Scotland were supra-lapsarians. Calvin himself (so 
well as I remember, for I have not his institutions by me) and the most of 
the Calvinists about the beginning of the present century, were sub-lapsarians. 
But Calvinism, as now generally embraced by President Edviards's admirers, 
seems to me as different from original Calvinism, as it is from Arminianism. 
It seems to me some middle thing, patch 'd up of both ; and that, if it must 
have a name, it should be called Edvoardism. I would that the Protestant 
world could be prevailed on wholly to drop these invidious nominal distinc- 
tions, which almost ever affix the idea of heresy or damnable error to the op- 
posite party. I think it a violation of that law, whereby we are commanded 
to call no man master, save Christ. Though I believe myself to be more 
of a Calvinist than an Arminian, yet I disclaim both these appellations, as I 
can subscribe to neither of these great men throughout. And for the like rea- 
son, I think you, and my brethren with you, should do the same, It is enough, 
if we are Christians indeed. 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &?c. 



17 



whether I xvill and choose it or not. My xvilling, or not xviU 
ling, makes no manner of odds in my power or ability. The 
thing is wholly beyond any natural power of mine. 

The same will, in my opinion, holds equally true in moral of 
spiritual, as it does in natural difficulties. If there be any in- 
surmountable obstacle in my way, to any moral or spiritual at- 
tainment, it is, in the nature of things, wholly as impossible 
for me to remove this obstacle, as to remove the mountain. 

Having thus abridged this definition to what I think its true 
and natural limits, I would farther say — That, upon the scheme 
of a particular redemption, it is as impossible for the non-elect 
or reprobate, to be saved, or to do or obtain any thing spiritually 
good, as it is for me to remove a mountain ; so that the moral 
inability they are under, is to all intents and purposes, a natural 
one: for were it even possible that they could have a zv ill and 
desire to be saved, yet are they under a natural impossibility of 
salvation ; — for them no Saviour was intended or provided ; — to 
them no Saviour was sent ; — for them no Saviour died ; — for 
them was no spirit purchased,—— and to them no salvation is 
really and sincerely offered. It is then ipso facto impossible 
for them to believe, repent, or do any thing spiritually good, or 
to obtain any power of doing these things ; and much more to 
be saved. I do not mean, that they have no such power 
in themselves; for in this respect, all are on a footing; but 
there is an insurmountable obstacle in the way : the thing can- 
not be : and therefore, by your own concession, they must be 
wholly blameless in not believing, repenting, &c. i. e. in not 
doing natural impossibilities. If, to this it is answered, as 
it generally is by Calvinists, that man, by his apostacy, has 
brought this impotency upon himself ; and that man's having 
lost his ability of doing good, does not deprive God of his 
just requisitions upon man ; so that God may justly and equita- 
bly enjoin many duties upon man, which he hath now, through 
his apostacy, no power of performing: — that these commands 
are just and equitable in themselves, and therefore may be, 
and ought to be enjoined on an impotent creature, and the like ; 
I will more particularly consider this matter below. I would 
at present observe, 

That the scriptures seem to lay the grand cause of guiltiness 
and condannablentss in sinners, not so much on their original 



18 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Greet}, 

apostacy and the corruption of their nature, as upon their not 
coming to Christ as their Saviour, and believing in him, and 
complying with his saving design, and cherishing the motions 
of his spirit, and repenting of their sins, and doing something 
which God hath graciously put it in their power to do, and 
which he is continually disposing and exciting' them to do ; 
continually rvorking or operating in them, both to will and to do 
the things that are pleasing to him. The gospel seems uni- 
formly to offer salvation to the greatest of sinners, to all sin- 
ners, and to tell them, without exception or limitation, that a 
Saviour is provided for them, and that it is some how or other 
•wholly their own fault if they do not come to him, and embrace 
him, and be saved by him : all which must be absolutely false 
and shamefully trifling, if Christ did not die for all sinners, 
and if the benefits of his death were not put properly within the 
reach of all gospel sinners, without exception ; or if there were 
any natural or insurmountable obstacle put in the way of the sal- 
vation of any such sinner, by decrees, fatal concatenation of 
irresistible motives, or otherwise. So that if there be any 
truth in this remark, then, either the Calvinistic doctrine of 
particular redemption is antiscriptural and absurd, or the dis- 
tinction of moral inability is applicable only to the unconverted 
elect, and is very improper and untrue when addressed to the 
hearers of the gospel promiscuously, as applicable to them all. 

Indeed, I have always deemed it either dishonest or trifling, 
in particular Redemptionists, to address the offers of the gospel 
to all in general, and to urge all in general to believe in Christ, 
repent, &c. with a solemn assurance that no obstacle stood in the 
wav of the salvation of any sinners of Ada?n 7 s race, but their own 
perverseness and unwillingness to come to Christ, that they 
might have life. I have such an abhorrence of insincerity, that, 
I protest, were I into this scheme of thinking, I should think 
mvself obliged to preface every discourse in which the offers of 
salvation were made to sinners, with some such declaration as 
this : " My poor fellow-sinners, God hath, of his sovereign 
pleasure, chosen some of the corrupt mass of mankind to eternal 
life, and hath passed by the rest, and left them to perish ever- 
lastingly without remedy. Who this happy number are, we 
know not: but in hopes that some of them may be among my 
audience, who are still in their sins, I am commissioned, in the- 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &c. 



19 



name of God, to make these offers to such, being assured that 
one time or other, they will be called by his grace, and have 
their moral impotence and inability removed by this call. — As 
to the rest of you, whoever you are, your case is irremediable 
and desperate. You have no claim to these tenders, nor can. 
you have anv part in this gospel salvation. Nevertheless, it 
will be your duty quietly to acquiesce in, and even to approve 
of, this disposal of things, as your eternal misery will be so 
over-ruled as to promote the general good of the system, and 
to manifest the glory of the divine sovereignty in the final issue 
of things. Yet, as it is impossible for any of you to know, in 
particular, that you are the unhappy persons; you are all, with- 
out exception, commanded and invited by the external call of 
the gospel, to believe, repent and be converted; and these invita- 
tions and commands being reasonable in themselves, though a 
compliance with them be impossible to you, your non-compliance 
with them will justly aggravate your eternal misery."- — Yet, my 
dear and very xvorthy friend, were I thus persuaded, methinks 
I would publish these glad tidings to my fellow sinners with an 
heavy heart and a faultering tongue; conscious that many of 
them were under a natural impossibility of embracing them, 
and yet were liable to an increased condemnation for rejecting 
them : for, he that believeth not, is condemned already, because 
he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God. 
John iii. 

*The chief of these objections may be inferred from the fol- 
lowing reasoning : " All men without exception or distinction 
are invited and commanded to come unto Christ and believe 
in him. All sober Calvinistic divines believe it to be the indis- 
pensable duty of all sinners, without exception, to obey these 
commands and comply with these invitations, and that they are 
justly condemnabie and punishable in not doing so. They af- 
firm (as Christ has done before them) that their not coming to 
Christ and believing in him, is the formal cause and an aggra- 
vating circumstance of their condemnation : Te will not come 
to me, that ye might have life. If ye believe not that I am he, 
ye shall die in your sins. This is the condemnation, that light 
is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light. 

* This paragraph in the original text was inserted in a note to the introduc- 
tion of the letters. 



20 Letter of the Rev. II. Knox to the Rev. J> Green, 

He that believeth on Christ is not condemned: but he that be*» 
lieveth not, is condemned already, because he hath not believed 
in the name of the only begotten Son of God. He that hath 
not, and believeth not, the Son, shall not see life, but shall be 
damned. It is also pretty generally allowed by Calvinistic di- 
vines, that to come to Christ and believe in him, implies in it 
not merely a belief that he is the only Saviour of human sin- 
ners in general, but that he died for us, and is our Saviour in 
particular, at least in offer. And indeed the very nature of 
faith; the very duty of coming to Christ and believing on him, 
seems necessarily to imply thus much in it, namely, that we 
come to him and apply to him under a firm persuasion that he 
is our Saviour in offer, and that we rely upon him, under this 
character, for redemption and remission of sins through his 
blood: for it is utterly inconceivable how we should come to 
him, apply to him, or believe on him, under any other notion, 
than that he is our Saviour, and that we may obtain salvation 
by and through him. — But now, if the Calvinistic doctrine of 
particular redemption be true, as it is taught by a great num- 
ber of the ablest and most eminent divines, it would appear to 
follow from their own doctrines, that God commands reprobate 
or non-elect sinners to believe a lie; not only so, but that he 
condemns them and increases their condemnation for not be- 
lieving this lie; namely, that Christ died for them; is 
their Saviour ; with all his benefits, is sincerely offered to their 
acceptance ; and that if they would come to Christ and believe 
on him, they might have redemption and eternallife through 
his name. Whereas, according to their doctrines of particular 
redemption and reprobation, Christ never was the Saviour of 
reprobate or non-elect sinners, either in intention or offer, and 
never died for them, any more than /or devils. They do in - 
deed talk of many benefits and advantages which the non-elect 
enjoy by Christ, as life and all its blessings, this world and all 
its enjoyments, the means of grace, and a short respite from 
hell. But seeing all these supposed benefits only give them op- 
portunity of aggravating their condemnation, by their continu- 
ing in unbelief and impenitency under that gospel, which can 
never profit them, the glad tidings of salvation by a Redeemer, 
together with present life and all its enjoyments, are so far 
from deserving the name of benefits, that, upon the whole, they 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &c. 21 



are great and real disadvantages to all such, and must needs be 
so, in the very nature of things. 

But you disclaim the doctrine of particular redemption, and 
therefore are not chargeable with its consequences. Let us ex- 
amine however whether you do not confound the ideas of natu- 
ral and moral inability in your sermon, and whether moral in- 
ability, in some passages of it, does not, by fair construction, 
amount to that which is properly natural. Indeed, I cannot see 
it possible for any person of your principles to avoid confusion 
in this matter ; because I think some of your principles utterly 
inconsistent with this distinction. 

You in a manner begin your discourse with a postulatum 
which seems to need proof, by saying, page 4th, u That God 
might justly have left all mankind in their obstinacy and impe- 
nitency, without affording his special, or even restraining 
grace." — Yes, provided these were self-contracted, and arose 
not from original corruption, aided by a fatal train of invinci- 
ble motives to evil, inducing necessity ; in which case, I should 
imagine that the obstinacy and impenitency of mankind would 
have been blameless and guiltless. God might doubtless have 
justly extinguished the human race as soon as it fell, punishing 
only the actually guilty ; but having spared it, and suffered it to 
propagate upon the earth, the question is, Whether he might 
have, consistent with his justice and benevolence, left it in a 
state of sin and misery, without affording it a dispensation of 
either special or restraining grace? — He did not, and therefore 
I argue that he could not; for he did what was best, and could 
not do otherwise. But these bold hypothetical postulata seem 
to be the natural offspring of a system which begins with the 
consideration of rnan in a fallen state, and passes slightly over 
the grand question, " How mankind came into those circum- 
stances of sin and misery in which we now find them?" From 
an attentive consideration of which question, I imagine, the 
necessity of a dispensation of mercy, on God's part, will clearly 
appear ; and that this mercy cannot be the narrow, contracted 
partial thing which particular redemptionists suppose, but must 
reach, in the possible attainment of it, to all the kind. 

You assert, page 18 of the sermon, " The want of power," or 
spiritual inability, " is the want of will." " This want of will 
is all the inability there is, What God requires is the soul and 

4 



22 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 



will, in that which is spiritually good. Man lost his spiritual 
ability, or good will, or inclination to good, by the depravity of 
human nature, at the fall." p. 14. Then God requires that 
which man hath not to give him, and never had since the fall: for 
" the sinner's inability is the same as the depravity of nature " 
and " till God, by his omnipotent power, changes the heart 
and will," and puts the sinner within the reach of good motives, 
" he never will cease to love sin, and have an aversion to holi- 
ness." p. 20. It is a good heart and will that God requires of 
the sinner, which the sinner has not to give, and which he can- 
not have, until God gives it him. " If then a sinner cannot 
will a thing until he hath xvilled it; nor choose until he hath cho- 
sen; nor desire, until he hath desired;"* and that some 
power that he hath not, must first enable him to will, choose 
and desire, before he can do these things: — what can this be 
but a natural inability P It is the want of an ability which 
he hath never divested himself of, because he never possessed 
it : in short, it is such an inability as frees him from blame, (by 
page 12) ; because, to the giving of God the will he is supposed 
to demand, there is an " insuperable difficulty ;" in as much as 
the man cannot give zvhat he has never had, nor ever can ob- 
tain by any endeavours of his own : nay, the man cannot even 
desire it, or wish for it. " He can desire, when he hath a de- 
sire" but not before. Yet you say, (p. 19) " they have all 
the power that can be conceived in the nature of things for a 
sinner to have ; — for they have light in the understanding ; they 
see the reasonableness and fitness of things, and the obligations 
they are under," &c. I greatly question this. I always thought 
the understanding was sadly darkened and blinded by the fall ; 
— that the natural man could not know, nor diseern the things 
of the spirit of God, — and that it required the power of re- 
newing grace to cure this faculty of its blindness ; that, the eyes 
of their understanding being enlightened, sinners might know 
zvhat is the hope of his calling, &c. But I find that Mr. Hop- 

* This is a strange paradox founded upon Mr. Edwards's subtle doctrine 
of the will: Whereas surely we can conceive of a power inherent in- an in- 
telligent agent (such as the human soul) prior to its operation or exertion. 
May not a soul have a power of willing before it'ivills? May not I have a 
will to do something, before I exert this volition, so as to bring this thing 
into existence ? 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &c. 



23 



kins and you make out this faculty pretty sound and vigorous, 
as though it had suffered little, if any thing, by the original 
apostacy. 

You assert, page 26th, " It is impossible to choose a new 
heart, without having a new heart." — Yet below — u God re- 
quires the inclination, choice, and zvill to that which is good 
and God must give this neru heart before the sinner can will 
or even desire it. God then requires a natural impossibility 
from the sinner. 

In the whole of the second branch (p. 29) you include na- 
tural invincible propensities in the notion of spiritual inability, 
raci make no difference, in point of blameableness, between 
them and such as are contracted by habit and indulgence. You 
seem indeed to have been aware (p. 24) that there is some 
difference, as to blame, between propensities born with us, and 
those contracted " by custom and practice ;" by keeping the 
former out of sight, while you argue the sinner's faultiness* 
But here, where you purpose to remove this weighty objec- 
tion against blame, you seem very superficial ; alleging, in 
general, that to plead any abatement of blame from original 
corruption, is, in fact, to cast the charge of it upon God, 
instead of blaming and condemning ourselves for original 
sin :* and then recurring to your definition of faultiness, you 
put off the matter lightly on which the greatest stress lies, 
by saying, " that this is the view of awakened convinced sin- 
ners."f I am of opinion that it is a sinner's own guiltiness, 

* I would beg leave to put some questions here, to which I would beg di- 
rect attd 'categorical answers. Do you think it possible for a man, judging 
rightly, to blame and condemn himself, as guilty of Adam's first sin ? Do you 
think we are properly to blame for the corrupt natures we brought into the 
world with us, antecedently to our approbation of them, , and acting in con- 
formity to them ? Or that God ever did or will condemn a human creature 
to eternal misery, purely for this corruption of nature ? Or, that he may do 
it consistent with infinite justice and benevolence ? — If not ; can I have pro- 
per remorse for that, as my sin, which God will not, cannot impute to me as 
my sin, and for which he will ?iot, cannot punish me eternally ? Can I there- 
fore blame and condemn myself for original sin ? 

f We are not, I apprehend, in this controversy, to consider the feelings of 
awakened convinced sinners, relative to their original corruption. The very 
youngest of them have actual sin enough to make them most humble, and to 
make them feel infinitely guilty and unworthy before God. Besides the new 
views they have of the great corruption of their nature ; its infinite opposi- 
tion to God's holiness, and the necessity of its being removed, before they 
can enjoy God, the chief good, must needs fill them with vast concern (if not. 



24 Letter of the Rev. II. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 



and self -contracted vileness and pollution which most distress 
him at that time. u The soul that sinneth, it shall die" Ori- 
ginal sin, or, what I would rather choose to term it, original 
corruption (for I know of no original sin, properly so called, 
but the first transgression of Adam J, is only of secondary con- 
sideration, as the source from which actual transgressions flow, 
and the stock on which they are ingrafted by our own hands, 
and it therefore ought to be lamented, and must be removed, in 
order to the attainment of true holiness. 

You say, page 33, " We may hence infer the importance of 
ministers taking pains to enlighten the people," &c. Page 20, 
you said that " sinners are so out of the way of rational motives, 
that God's omnipotent power is necessary," & c » And here the 
preacher is directed to enlighten and offer motives, as a very 
important duty, and the success not in the least doubted. 

Page 35 you assert, " If they saw their helplessness was no- 
thing but their wickedness (and this they may see, or rather do see 
already, without any supernatural means ; for there is light in 
the understanding, &c. p. 19, 20, 25) instead of pretending to 
wait for God's help (as some presumptuously do), they might 
immediately submit to God." — Might they indeed ? This 
seems to imply some power to change the will not granted be- 
fore, and which indeed I, even upon my principles, would not 
choose to grant : for it is my firm persuasion that the corrupt 
human zvill will never be changed to any degree of good, 
without a supernatural, divine influence. 

Now, when the above things are attentively considered, which 
seem perfectlv of a piece with President Edzvards's reasoning 
on the snme subject (see his book on the will, from p. 22 to p. 
23, &c.) and when, to these, is added his doctrine of external 
motives ; I think it must evidently appear that your natural and 
spiritual inability come at last to the very same thing. 

remorse) on this head. And these different feelings rising so powerfully and 
instantaneously in the mind, cannot well be distinguished at that time. 
"When a man feels himself drowning, he has no leisure to consider boiv he got 
into the water; but, perceiving himself in a perishing condition, eagerly 
catches at the hand of a deliverer, anxious to get out of imminent danger. 
Bat when, as divines or philosophers, we coolly and deliberately trace things 
to the r source and origin, we are direcdy led to consider benv men came into 
their present wretched, helpless condition, and to vindicate the dealings of 
God with them in this state. And this I take to be the proper business of 
the present controversy. 



m Free Will, Divine Decrees, &c. 



25 



Next as to your doctrine of praise and blame, you say (p. 
13) M that, in order to know whether a person is to blame, 
mankind do not enter into the abstruse inquiry, whether he 
could help being of such a bad inclination and will, or how he 
came by itP" But, my dear Sir, this is the very abstruse inquiry 
which is necessary to be made, in order to justify the ways of 
God to man : for, if he U could not help being of such a bad 
inclination and will," nor ever had it in his power to help it ; 
but came by this perverse temper, not through any fault of his 
own ; you may indeed call his temper perverse or faulty, — 
but I should deem him as blameless in being of such a temper, 
as a heavy body is, in having an invincible tendency and incli- 
nation towards the centre of gravity.* " They reasonably con- 
clude," you say, " that such a perverse temper and practice is 
faulty ;" — I suppose you mean criminal, and justly punishable, 
in the person that has it. " They know that if the person had 
a desire, heart or will to do otherwise, he could do otherwise ; 
there is no impediment," (what ? if he cannot help being of 
such a temper ? if he has no heart, desire or will to do other- 
wise ; nor can have it ?) " and, therefore, he is to blame." I 
think not guilty, if the case be indeed so. A child is prick'd by 
a pin — it winches, cries, and will not be quiet — the nurse pro- 
nounces it stubborn — its temper is perverse and bad — but when 

* The distinction which Mr. Knox makes between the perverseness or faul- 
tiness of a certain temper of mind, and the hlameableness of the individual 
who possesses this temper, is just and important. This temper may be in it- 
self faulty or perverse; but if the individual possesses it through no act of his 
mon, he is not to blame for it. Guilt is contracted and punishment incurred, 
only by the commission of actual sin. On this subject the 9th article of the 
Church displays that caution and moderation which distinguish all the articles. 
This article pronounces concerning " original sin," styled " the fault or cor- 
ruption of our nature," that " rr deserveth God's wrath and damnation." 
Sin in itself is certainly obnoxious to God's wrath. But if any of his crea- 
tures are sinful through no act of their own, they cannot be blameable, 
they cannot be justly obnoxious to punishment. Man, therefore, is not more 
blameable for his original corruption which he inherits, than he is for any bo- 
dily infirmity with which he comes into the world. He is blameable only for 
those actual transgressions which through divine grace it is in his power to 
avoid. Accordingly, the 9th article does not maintain the Calvinistic doc- 
trine, equally abhorrent to reason and scripture, that ail men are justly obnoxi- 
ous to eternal misery for Adam's sin ! ! Original sin, the corruption of hu- 
man nature may deserve God's wrath ; and yet they who are tainted with this 
corruption, through no act of their own, be in no respect liable on account 
of it, to eternal punishment. His actual transgressions, only committed with 
the choice of his will made free by grace, expose him to this awful doom. Ed. 



26 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. f. Green, 

she inquires into, and knows the cause, she cannot in justice 
pronounce it criminal, and deserving of punishment. The 
other instances seem not much to the purpose ; because they 
are all those of adults, who may be supposed to have added to 
original corruption, inveterate habits of vice, bv a wilful indul- 
gence ; and are, therefore, highly criminal, and justly punishable. 

Your definition of blameableness (p. 12), where you conclude 
a person blameable, and, consequently, punishable, " who has 
no desire, inclination, will, or endea%~our to that which is rea- 
sonable, jit, and proper to be done; which is attended with 
good consequences when done, and to the doing of which there 
is no insuperable difficulty;" seems pretty unexceptionable; 
but there seems to be little regard paid to the last clause of it 
throughout the rest of the discourse. Certainly a person who 
has sufficient light and knowledge of duty, and of his obliga- 
tions to perform it, and of the fitness and reasonableness of it, 
and to the performance of which there is no insuperable diffi- 
culty, and yet has neither desire, will, nor endeavour towards 
the performance of it, is justly blameable before God and man; 
and all such, I believe, without timely repentance, will bear 
their iniquity. The latter branch of the same definition (p. 13) 
seems to me defective; nor could I admit it without a proviso 
which I shall subjoin to it in italicks. It runs thus: " When a 
person has a desire, inclination, heart, and endeavour for that 
which is unreasonable, unfit, and improper to be done; which 
he is commanded by God not to do, and the doing of which 
will be pernicious to himself and others; then he is to blame." 
Provided, nevertheless, add I, that the person be a free agent ; 
hath the liberty of choice, and is under no necessitating influence 
of doing zvhat he does, nor natural inability of doing the con- 
trary. But the grand difficulty with me, is, how to reconcile, 
that fatal train or chain of causal motives, by which men are 
necessarily determined in all their volitions and actions, both 
good and evil; in so much that they cannot zvill or do otherwise 
than they actually will and do (which I take to be precisely Pre- 
sident Edzuards's scheme) ; with the free agency of the creature, 
and his rewardableness and punishableness ; or with the justice 
and essential universal benevolence of the divine Being. Hie 
labor, hoc opus est! 

The distinction w that men can do otherwise, if they had a 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, efc. 2T 

heart and ivill to it," appears to me either extremely trifling, 
or subtle and abstruse beyond my comprehension: for the 
scheme against which I militate expressly supposes that the 
will itself (including, I suppose, heart, desire, and inclination J 
is necessarily moved and impelled by external motives ; which, 
to suppose that it could resist, would be to give up the contro- 
versy, and to allow the self-determining power of the will. So 
that if this necessary determination of the will itself by exter- 
nal motives which it cannot counteract, control, or resist, does 
not so far destroy free agency, as to render the creature thus 
influenced and moved, incapable of praise or blame, and leave 
the wicked under a natural inability of becoming good, by any 
means or endeavours within the compass of their own power ; 
I confess I shall for ever despair of being able to draw a cer- 
tain conclusion from the clearest premises. 

I conceive that the liberty of different beings may be zvidely, 
yea, essentially different ; and that if we argue from liberty 
of zuill in God, Christ, angels, and perfected human spi- 
rits, to liberty of will in man in present circumstances, we shall 
be in danger of falling into very great mistakes. Yet this, Presi- 
dent Edwards and you have both done ; and the main stress of 
your scheme seems to lie upon the inferences from this kind of 
reasoning. You argue that virtue in God is necessary in the 
highest degree, and yet he is in the highest degree praise-wor- 
thy : — That, on the other hand, vice is necessary in the high- 
est degree in the devil and other damned spirits, who are yet 
in the highest degree blameable and punishable. 

When you consider Adam as breaking the covenant, and 
abusing a glorious liberty, you cannot help considering him as 
more blameable and guilty than a child born of sinful parents 
in a state of corruption ; or even than a common adult trans- 
gressor at this day. And when you consider the angels as fal- 
ling from their first state of holiness, without a tempter, you 
are inclinable to consider them as more blameable than Adam, 
a6 having abused higher privileges, and a more glorious liberty 
than his. Angels and perfected human spirits who are fixed and 
confirmed in happiness and holiness, have certainly a more 
perfect freedom of will to good, than is agreeable to creatures 
in a state of trial ; i. e. liberty of will is a greater perfection 



28 Letter of the Rev, H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

in those than in these. It will be easily allowed also that there 
are many different degrees of this freedom of the will towards 
good among Christians, even in this present life, from the new 
convert, the babe in Christ, the Christian of imperfect character 
and low attainments, to the most confirmed Christians and emi- 
nent saints ; all these degrees progressively tending nearer and 
nearer to the glorious liberty of perfected spirits, That virtue is 
necessaiy in God, and yet highly praise-worthy, I am far from 
denying. But, that liberty or freedom of will in God an indefect- 
ible being, and in man a lapsed creature in a state of probation, 
is essentially or specifically the same kind of perfection, is not 
at all evident, but rather the contrary. God is impeccable and 
indefectible, not from any fated or physical necessity, not by any 
motives from without, or by any decrees, commands, promises 
or threatenings from the will or power of a superior being ; but 
by the infinite wisdom, purity, rectitude and perfection of his . 
own nature, which invariably determines him to will and choose 
that which is fittest and best. So that it may be said in one 
sense, that God is virtuous by necessity of nature, and that he 
cannot be otherwise; yet this arises from no deficiency of power 
in the Almighty, but from the singular and peerless perfec- 
tion of his understanding, which ever discerns that which is 
good, and rectitude of his will which ever chooses and approves 
it. Is not moral liberty, therefore, something singular in God, 
and essentially different from what it is, or can be, in any crea- 
ture ? None sure is good, in this sense, but God ; the very hea- 
vens are not pure in his sight, and he chargeth his angels with 
folly. If elect angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect, 
are now impeccable and infallible, and their wills have an inva- 
riable tendency to good, they are not so in their own nature ; 
they owe this perfection of libertu wholly to God, and depend 
on influences, motives, and considerations zuithout them for the 
continuance of it; it is an adventitious perfection conferred upon, 
and continued with them to complete their felicity. I would, 
therefore, beg leave to suppose that the praise due to God is 
quite^of a different nature and consideration from that due to 
an imperfect creature, who, in a state of probation, acquits it- 
self well. God is infinitely holy by necessity of nature, and is 
therefore infinitely to be praised, loved, and admired for this 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &?V. 



29 



glorious, incommunicable perfection; — to be praised, not be- 
cause he does not act unworthily, but because he is so perfect 
that he cannot. 

But when we consider that imperfect kind of liberty, which 
seems peculiar to creatures in a state of probation, and without 
which it seems impossible that they should be probationers at 
all, praise and blame as applicable to them, seem to be different, 
and to take their rise from a drfferent source. Praise, in my 
opinion, implies that a man might have done zvorse; and blame, 
that he .might have done better. Blame, even in devils, seems 
to imply that they have contracted their present invdterate, in- 
curable wickedness, by some personal fault, neglect, or abuse 
of theirs, which they might have either prevented or remedied. 
And blame in damned human spirits, I am persuaded, is to be 
grounded on the same reason. For my part, I should think it 
altogether as just to blame a man for being born blind, as a child 
for being bom zvith a corrupt nature ; and therefore think it as 
certain that no infant shall ever be everlastingly punished purely 
for original corruption, as that there is a just and righteous God. 
And could I be certain that any human creature was born with 
such a nature, and placed by an overruling providence in such 
circumstances of life, as that he could by no means zvithin his 
pozuer obtain reformation ; let him be as wicked and mischiev- 
ous as he would, I should deem him no more blame -worthy or 
punishable for being so, than a stone for falling, or water for 
spreading itself into an horizontal plane. On the other hand, 
could I conceive an angel in a confirmed state of holiness, with- 
out any antecedent trial of virtue, I would call such an angel a 
holy and happy creature ; but could by no means suppose its 
holiness a praise-worthy qualification. The praise would be 
due only, and wholly to him who made it so. 

But the grand argument, " that praise is due to necessary 
virtue even in a creature, and that too in a state of trial" 
upon which President Edwards lays the greatest stress, and 
which he thinks is decisive in the controversy, is taken from 
the human soul of the man Jesus, all the acts of whose will are 
supposed to be necessarily holy, and yet at the same time truly 
virtuous, praise-worthy and rewardable, Mr. Edivards has 
taken uncommon pains to prove the first part of this position ; 
because, he says, it has been denied by Episcopius ana other 

5 



30 Letter from the Rev, H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

Ar minimis. I confess I clan see little weight in what Mr. Ed- 
wards has said so largely on this head, with regard to the solu- 
tion of the main difficulty. No Christian I suppose will dispute 
that there was an eventual consequential necessity of the perfect 
holiness of the man Jesus (as the Calvinists allow there is of 
the sincere holiness and fnal salvation of elect sinners). The 
will of the man Jesus was invariably determined to good by 
proper motives suited to his rational nature, and in consequence 
of the divide fore-knowledge, decree, covenant, promises, and 
the succours and supports promised and given unto him ; that is ? 
it was impossible for him to commit sin, m the same sense as it 
is impossible for an elect sinner to be damned ; — or it was as 
necessary for him to continue perfectly holv, as it is for an elect 
sinner to become sincerely holy by conversion, and to be finally 
saved. Yet who will say that either of these are necessarily 
holy and virtuous, in the same sense or manner that God is 
so? God is indefectible and impeccable in himself: but will 
any say that the human soul of Christ, as a creature, is thus 
necessarily holy; or that it was in the same manner impossible 
for it to sin ? Nay, the very supposition, that it was properly m 
a state of trial, seems to imply that it was not impossible in the 
nature of things for it to fall. Herein, I think, evidently con- 
sists one part of the preeminence of the second Adam above 
the first. The one abused a glorious liberty; the other did not, 
although he might. We might have thought it impossible for 
mere man to have preserved this virtue and integrity in such a 
world and state as this, because Adam did not : But God hath 
graciously condescended to convince us of the contrary, by ex- 
hibiting an instance of the possibility of it in the man Jesus ; 
who, although a mere man, and tempted in all points as Adam 
was, and we are, yet continued perfectly sinless and heroically 
virtuous i— of which the holy life of Christ could have been 
no proper instance, could we suppose his soul properly impec- 
cable. If we suppose the soul of Christ indefectible, then all 
his trials and temptations will seem to lose their significancy 
and propriety : For to what purpose tempt an impeccable be- 
ing? No supposeable force of temptation can be any trial at all 
to the virtue of a being wholly indefectible. How could such a 
being suffer, being tempted ; or learn from an experience of the 
force and weight of temptations, to pity, sympathize with, and 



en Free Will, Divine Decrees, 

mccour those that are tempted ? It adds little honour, in my 
opinion, to the moral character of the man Jesus, to say that 
he vanquished temptations which could cost him no manner of 
conflict or struggle ; that he passed through a state of proba- 
tion, without meeting one adequate trial of his virtue ; and that 
he merited exaltation and glory by conquering temptations, 
under which it was impossible for him to have succumbed. 
Christ, therefore, as a man, is to be praised and for ever ad- 
mired by all the rational world, for gloriously acquitting him- 
self in a state of trial ; for obeying the divine commands, and 
being encouraged by the divine promises, and thus continuing 
in a steady, exalted course of virtue amidst the strongest temp- 
tations and trials; while it was possible for him, in the nature of 
things, to have done othenvise. Nor do I think that this sup- 
position does at all derogate from the glory of the man Jesus ; 
but greatly inhances it ; seeing it supposes him to have so glori- 
ously improved an imperfect liberty, peculiar to creatures in a 
state of trial. On the contrary ; to suppose his human soul in- 
defectible, is to make it equal with God. 

I also think there is a fallacy in your borrowing your idea of 
blame-worthiness, from what is so estimated among men, es- 
pecially upon your principles, as you do, pages 13 and 14 of 
your discourse. If I mistake not, the common sense of man- 
kind runs directly counter to your idea of it. If vile transgres- 
sors, thieves, robbers, murderers, &c. are deemed culpable and 
punishable by human society, it is upon my principles ; upon 
the prevailing supposition that they might have acted better, if 
they had so pleased ; — and not only so, but that they might 
have willed and inclined better. Their having it in their power 
to choose a better course, while they neglect this choice, is the 
very thing which renders them blame-worthy in the esteem of 
human society; and destroys that pity in the minds of men, to 
which they could be otherwise entitled. Although madmen and 
lunatics commit bad actions as much with their will, and as. 
freely, in your sense of the word, as other men ; yet because 
they are not moral agents, in my sense of moral agency, the 
blameableness of such actions in them, is extenuated in exact 
proportion to the degree of their madness. But were it the 
general, prevailing sense of mankind, that wicked men were 
under the influence of motives which they could not resist, and 



32 Letter of ike Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

that, in the plan and disposal of providence, it was necessary 
for them to art just as they do act, we might pity them, but 
sure we could not blame them : nay, human society might find 
it necessary to confine them, as men do bears and Horn, to pre- 
vent their doing mischief ; or even, in some cases, to cut them 
off for the benefit and security of others, as we kill a viper lest 
he hire us; but now could we deem them hhmeable before 
God, or punishable in a future state, for a conduct to which 
the}' we re impelled bv a fatal necessity of nature ? 

I would row beg leave to speak a few words relative to the 
doctrine of original sin, .at the freedom of which I hope you 
will take no offence ; and the rather so, when I assure you that 
I sh,.ll speak rather more fr cell/ in this matter, than I dare to 
think i that I may procure solid solutions to some plausible ob- 
jections against the orthodox mode of explaining it. Mew? 
have fallen in Adam : from him they have necessarily derived a 
corrupt nature. — Say what we will of Adam's- federal headship. 
yet it seems impossible for us not to believe that this hereditary 
taint and corruption of nature, is more the misfortune than the 
fault of Adam's posteritv. Men come into the world in these 
unhappy circumstances, bv no personal fault of theirs. It will 
not, I suppose, satisfy thinking men to say, tc That God, in his 
moral government, found all mankind in a corrupt, guilty, mis- 
erable, perishing state ; and that it is sovereign mercy in him to 
save some, and doing no zvrong or injustice to leave others to 
perish in this state." 

The question will still recur, " Kow came mankind into this 
perishing state? was it by their own personal fault? or, was it 
by the fault of one whom God chose to be their federal head 
and representative, and who, he foresaw, would ill acquit him- 
self in this department : and therefore by the determination and 
disposal of God himself?'" It will scarce be thought sufficiert 
to relieve this difficulty, to say, " that God best knew whom to 
choose as our federal head, and that none of Adam's posterity- 
were more likely to keep the covenant than himself;" or, " that 
each of them would have certainly broken it in his own per- 
son." Besides that this is only conjectural and inconclusive, it 
will be deemed an imputation on the goodness of God for 
making such creatures in such circumstances, that no one of 
the race could be supposed capable of fulfilling the law of his 



on Free Will, Divilie Decrees, fc^c. 



3.3 



creation : It will be farther said, that all AdcrnCs posterity have 
never had the trial ; and that, on supposition of their having 
had it, and abused it, they would have been then properly, that 
is, personally culpable, and the divine disposal might then have 
stood clear of any plausible impeachment. Nor will it be sup- 
posed to clear up the difficulty, to allege, a that sinners have 
as little reason to find fault with God's choosing the first Adam, 
and imputing his guilt, as with his choosing the second, and 
imputing his righteousness ; and yet they never find fault with 
the latter, as repugnant to the ideas of justice and equity." 
The two cases are supposed to be widely different. Mercy 
may confer an undeserved favour on the guilty and miserable, 
without the imputation of injustice ; yea, it is of its very nature, 
and its glory, to do so. Whereas it is thought utterly irrecon- 
cileable with our notions of justice, to suppose that God should 
so order and determine things, as that his creatures should be 
brought into circumstances of guilt and misery by the fault of 
another; and yet eternally punish them for this guilt, without 
putting it in their power, by a new T state of trial and a dispensa- 
tion of mercy, to recover at least their lost ground ; to set them, 
as it were, where Adam first stood, or in an equally advantage- 
ous situation. — And if it seems impossible to reconcile this with 
our ideas of justice, how much more with those of mercy— - 
and that strengthened by the principle of universal benevolence, 
which is most certainly essential to the idea of the blessed God, 
According to the doctrine of particular redemption, as ex- 
plained by all strictly calvinistic writers, this idea of the divine 
justice, mercy and benevolence, can never be consistently held, 
according to my apprehension of things. These writers begin 
with men as lost, but seem not anxiously to inquire or clearly 
to determine how they came to be so ; or how far it concerns 
the righteous, merciful and benevolent God, to put them into a 
solvable state, or to give them a farther trial for their lost in- 
heritance. Not that I think any of the fallen race of Adam 
have any claim to heaven, founded on any of the divine per- 
fections : — But I imagine that the justice, mercy and benevo- 
lence of the divine nature entitle them, either to the privilege 
of an extinction of being, or to a chance for happiness equal to 
what innocent Adam had, and from which he fell, involving his 
posterity with him in a state of corruption and ruin: Thus, 



?A Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

where sin hath abounded, there will grace equally, yea muck 
more abound, by the superior privileges of the gospel. 

Upon this, to me, seemingly clear principle of the divine 
benevolence, I am inclined to believe, that Christ has repaired, 
yea much more than repaired, the ruins of the fall ; and put all 
mankind in as good, yea, in much better and more fovourable 
circumstances thaa ever Adam was in, even in his state of in- 
nocency. — I am induced to believe, upon the same principle, 
that no human infant will ever suffer eternal torments, on ac- 
count of any original sin or corruption whatever ; but that it 
will be, upon the whole, good for all of them, that they have 
been born ; — the free gift, by the righteousness of Christ, cow- 
s';^ upon all of them, unto justif cation of life. — I am inclined to 
believe, that no human creature shall ever finally perish, but by 
his personal and criminal abuse or misimprovement of some 
state of trial, by the right use of which he might have obtain- 
ed some measure or degree of eternal happiness.^— Through 
the mercy of God in Christ, I am induced to believe, that 
every human creature has it some hoxv or other put into his 
power, to be as happy as Adam could have been by keeping the 
covenant of life ; if not much happier. —And I am farther, on 
the same principles, induced to believe, that tenders of mercy 
and salvation in the gospel, are made to all men, without any 
exception, limitation or reserve, on the score of any divine de- 
cree, or any election or non-election; and that all sinners to 
whom the joyful sound reaches, by virtue of the offer, promise, 
invitation, and merciful dispensation of God, have it properly 
put within the reach of their pozver, yea, and will too, to accept 
them, and be everlastingly happy.* 

* Mr. SarJhnan, in his letters on Tkeron and Aspasio, entering entirely into 
Fresident Edwards's liberty of spontaneity, ridicules my notion of liberty as 
unintelligible " No man, says he, could ever conceive a notion of liberty higher 
than what lies in doing what we please. 1 ' But if we always do what we please, 
or, in other words, act freely according to thisnotiun of freedom, what comes 
of the apostle's assertion, " to will is present with one; but how to perform that 
which is good, I find not ;— far the good that I would, I do not ; but the evil that 
I would not, that I do" Rom.vii. " Ye cannot do the things that ye would." Gal. 
v. It seems then that the apostle did not always the things that he would, or 
that pleased him ; consequently that he did not act freely according to tins only 
conceiveable notion of human liberty — therefore was not a moral, accountable 
agent in any such actions. 

Indeed the celebrated declaration of Medea is so just, and agreeable to such 
abundant experience — tiidee meliora fnoboque, deieriora sequor — that I see nor 



an Free Will, Divine Decrees, &g* 



3* * * * * * * # * 

* * * * * * **** 
To sum up my sentiments on this head in a few words : I am 
inclined to believe that Christ, by dying for all, and purchas- 
ing the spirit for all, and putting all (absolutely the whole 
guilty race) in a solvable state, has removed the mountain 
of natural inability out of the way of all sinner s: so that 
all who will continue in their revolt and apostacy, and refuse 
the purchased, offered, salvation, shall be properly and highly 
eulpable, condemnable, and eternally punishable for so doing, and 
shall appear to themselves and to the whole world, to deserve 
no pity in their everlasting torments. 

Page 14th of your last letter you affirm, that till the moment 
of regeneration, there is nothing in the sinner that is spiritually 
good ; nothing but the exertions of that carnal mind which is 
enmity against God," &c. This I know is not a sentiment 
peculiar to yourself, but may be deemed properly calvinistic, 
as it is held by most divines of that party. However I have 
long doubted the truth of it, and am at a loss to know how it 
can consist with their doctrine of common grace, or what ren- 
ders it necessary in that scheme of thinking; and much more 
wherein consists the danger of the contrary sentiment. 

I readily grant that before an effectual, saving change, there 
can be no fixed, uniform, permanent principle of goodness. 
The necessity of conversion, in order to a life of true holiness 
here, and the complete enjoyment of God hereafter, is a truth 
so clear and self-evident, that if our Saviour had never said, 

how it can be disputed that men often act against their ultimum practicum judi- 
cium; that the soul has a power of exerting volitions, not only independent on, 
but even contrary to, the highest, best, and most apparent motives, — and that 
the connection between motives in the understanding and the exertions of the 
will, is not so strict as not to be often broken and grosly violated. 

Mr. Sandiman, however shuffling and inconsistent in other matters, is never- 
theless consistent with himself throughout in his notion of the fatality of hu- 
man volitions and actions. He is ever just to his principle ; so far as almost 
wholly to deny the propriety of moral suasion ; of calls, offers, invitations, or other 
addresses to the active and elective powers of the human soul. He ridicules 
what he calls the popular doctrine on this account; and is only for holding up 
the naked saving truth to the understanding, — persuaded that the elect will believe 
and embrace it, and that others cannot. And while, in one of his appendices, 
he extols Mr. Edwards, as the most masterly and unanswerable writer on the 
side of, what I call, necessity, he blames him of inconsistence (I fear too de- 
servedly) in fiilmg into the tract of the popular preachers in the practical use 
of his principles. See Sand. lett. ed. 3 vol. i. p. 245. vol. ii. p. 284, && 



63 * Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

" Except a man be born again of the spirit and converted, he 
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" — we might have in- 
ferred it from the principles of reason. No possibility of a 
new life, without a new heart, as the source of it. But I deem 
it inconsistent with the general tenor of scripture to suppose 
that sinners do nothing formally good, or agreeable to the mind 
of God before regeneration and conversion. It is, I think, 
pretty universally believed by calvinists, that there is such a 
thing as common grace, or a common operation of the spirit, in- 
fluencing all sinners, more especially gospel sinners. It is al- 
lowed that God is thus striving more or less with ail men, unless 
such as have out-sinned their day of grace. Nor, without ad- 
mitting this, can I see how wicked men should be blamed in 
scripture, for quenching, grieving and resisti?ig the spirit. If 
this be granted, and yet it be affirmed that unregenerate men 
do never comply with these common operations of the spirit, 
but ahvays resist them ; as Steven charges the Jexvs ; " Te 
stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always 
resist the Holy Ghost ; as your fathers did, so do ye F this needs 
proof. If the generality of the Jewish nation did, all might not. 
And if this was the character of the Jews, yet it may not be 
that of all sinners. It seems to have been the guilt of the Jews 
that they did thus resist, when they might have complied. 
Some of our most orthodox divines have not scrupled to sup- 
pose, that some of the finest heathen characters and writings 
are the fruits of such an influence. But wherever the holy 
spirit of God operates, and so far as he operates, his effects 
must be, like himself, holy; not only materially, but formally 
so. The worst of men are allowed to have some good thoughts, 
desires, purposes and resolutions, and what can these be, but 
the immediate fruits and effects of this holy agent ? for we are 
assured that all our sufficiency is of God ; that he is the author 
of every good and every perfect gift ; that, of ourselves, we 
cannot so much as think a good thought, and that in us, that is, 
in our flesh, or corrupt nature, dwelkth no good thing. If any 
are disposed, for the sake of a hypothesis, to deny the formal 
goodness of actions which seem to have all the apparent circum- 
stances of being such, there can be no disputing with them, be- 
cause there can be no way to convince them, as God only can 
certainly know" the temper, motives, aims, and designs of the 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, fcfc. 37 

the contrary. Especially when God vouchsafes to approve an 
action, and to declare it pleasing and acceptable to him, I think 
we have sufficient reason to conclude, that such an action is 
formally good; even although it should be done by an unre- 
generate sinner. Was it not some good thing in wicked Ahab, 
to humble himself and walk softly before God ? And did not 
God declare his approbation of such a conduct, by sparing the 
wicked king in consequence ?— When the Ninevites repented 
at the preaching of Jonah, did they do nothing formally good—* 
nothing pleasing and acceptable to God ? — Did wicked Nebu* 
chadnezzar do nothing formally good, when, convinced of his 
dependent state, he blessed the most High, and praised, ho- 
noured and extolled the King of heaven, in the noble and ex= 
cellent manner recorded, Dan. iv. 34—37? 

When our Lord looked upon the young man in the gospel, 
and loved him, can we suppose that he saw nothing in him 
morally good, which was a motive of his love? Is it to be ima- 
gined that Christ would express his love of one, in whom 
there was nothing spiritually good, nothing but the exertions of 
t that carnal mind which is enmity against God ? Yet we know 
that this youth was of very imperfect character ; that his heart 
was not wholly right with God, and that a good principle did 
not predominate in him ; — in other words, that he was not re- 
generated. — Did wicked Herod do nothing formally good^ 
when he heard the baptist gladly, and did many things willingly 
in obedience to his ministry ? — When Christ tells the Jews 
that the same John was a burning and shining light, and that 
they were willing for a season to rejoice in his light, (John v.) 
can we suppose that this temporary rejoicing in the light had 
nothing formally good in it, so far as it went ? Did it proceed 
from the corrupt nature and carnal mind of these Jews; or 
from the influences of the good spirit upon their affections?— 
When the stony ground hearers heard the word, and with joy 
received it, and endured for a while, may we not suppose that 
they did something formally good and pleasing to God ; al- 
though their goodness was like the morning cloud and early dew 
which passeth away ? — The cases put by the Apostles, Heb. vi. 
4 — 6, and 2 Pet. ii. 20 — 22, are generally supposed to be the 
cases of unregenerate persons; yet can we suppose that these 
persons never did any thing good, or from a right principle ? 

6 



38 Letter of the Rev, H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

It is hard to conceive that persons should be enlightened and 
taste of the heavenly gift, and be made partakers of the Holy 
Ghost, and taste the good word of God, and the powers of the 
world to come, and have escaped the pollutions of the world 
through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; 
and yet, under all these impressions, exercises and discoveries, 
never have thought one good thought, formed one good resolution, 
or done any one thing pleasing and acceptable to God. I deem 
it trifling to put off the force of the evidence which these two 
passages afford in favour of the sentiment I espouse, by saying 
that these are only hypothetical cases pat, which can never hap- 
pen in fact. This is making a nose of wax of the scriptures 
with a witness. Noi* is it treating the sacred oracles much 
more respectfully, to explain away these strong and nervous 
phrases to nothing, as though they imported nothing more than 
what happened to Saul among the prophet* I — When a wiked 
man, in reading a chapter of the Bible, or hearing a moving 
sermon, is convicted of a sin, and humbled because of it; is 
not this a good thought, so far as it goes . ? Is it not formally 
so ? And if this shame, humility and remorse should drive him 
to his knees in secret to ask God's pardon, with tears ; is not 
this a good action? I am well aware of what may be said here 
concerning natural conscience ; mechanical movement of the af- 
fections; want of right principles, &c. &c. but I cannot help 
thinking that all such convictions and penitential meltings un- 
der the word of God, are, in part at least, the fruits and ef- 
fects of that dispensation of the spirit which attends a preached 
gospel ; and that, in as far as they are so, they must be spi- 
ritually good, pleasing and acceptable to God. 

You will say that this goodness is not universal, uniform and 
persevering, and therefore not that goodness and righteousness 
which the gospel requires. I grant it : but the question is, 
" Can an unregenerate sinner do any thing formally good or 
pleasing to God ? — You will say there is a mixture of imper- 
fection in this kind of goodness, which has the nature of sin : 
and is there not the same in the best works of the best saints ? 
— You will say this kind of goodness can merit nothing at the 
hand of God ; can lay him under no kind of obligations to 
confer anv favours on the subjects of it: — Nor, surely, can 
that of the most holy men upon- earth; who are but unproflta- 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &c. 39 

ble servants when they have done all that ever they shall be 
enabled to do, under the greatest advantages. In a word, I 
can see no evident reason for making any other essential differ- 
ence between these two kinds of goodness than this ; that 
whereas the one is transient, partial, temporary, and unha- 
bitual; the other is universal, uniform, habitual, prevailing, 
and persevering', arising from the indwelling- and abiding 
energy of the Holy Spirit, as a sanctifier. 

And that men, even in a state of unregeneracy, may be better 
or worse ; farther from or nearer to, a right temper ; more 
or less pleasing and acceptable to God; or rather, more or less 
displeasing to God (for I would not choose to say, that ever 
the person or character of a sinner, upon the whole, can be 
said to be pleasing or acceptable to God, before he is regenerat- 
ed, pardoned and justified ) appears not obscurely from what 
our Saviour says of the young man in the gospel; and more es- 
pecially from what he said to the discreet scribe ; Luke xii. 34. 
And when Jesus sazv that he answered discreetly, he said unts 
him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God ; whereas it 
is said of others, that they are far from righteousness ; now 
if there be indeed such a diversity of character among unrege- 
nerate men, as that, while some are said to be far from righ- 
teousness, others are said to be near the kingdom of God ; what 
should be the reason of this difference I Can it be said of any 
two sinners, considered merely in a state of natural corruption, 
without the interposition of any supernatural divine influence, 
that the one of them is nearer the kingdom of God than the 
other ? I think not. Is it not, therefore, the most natural solu- 
tion of this difficulty, to suppose, that of two unregenerate sin- 
ners, the one may less resist, or better improve, these common 
operations of the good Spirit, than the other, and consequently 
be nearer to a right temper than he ? 

As to what you say of promises to the unregenerate. You 
will not, I suppose, dispute that there are many absolute and un- 
conditional promises made to such, because the whole scripture 
is full of them and that a poor sinner may and ought to plead 
these as well as he can in prayer. Indeed, many have gone so 
ar as to deny that there are any proper conditions belonging to 



*-Ezek. xi. 19.—xxxvi. 26, &e. Jerem. xxxii. 39, Sec. 



40 Letter of the Rev* H. Knox to the Rev, J. Green, 

the covenant of grace ; and to say that the gospel is nothing 
but a pure, unconditional promise to sinners. The question is, 
I presume, about conditional promises to unconverted sinners ; 
upon the performance of which conditions they are entitled, by 
the gracious appointment of God, to those influences of his 
spirit, which are efficacious, converting, and saving : Whether, 
in short, God hath made any gracious promises to the doings 
or exercises of persons in a state of unregeneracy ? — The an- 
swer to this question will, I apprehend, depend much upon 
that to the former ; to wit — u Whether unregenerate men, as 
such, can do any thing spiritually good, or acceptable to God?" 
For, if this can be granted in the affirmative ; if it be allowed 
that God by his spirit can or does, in any measure, influence 
the hearts of unregenerate men, and dispose them to good ; I 
cannot see it " inconsistent that God should make promises to 
such exercises" as are the fruits and effects of his own blessed 
spirit. I cannot but think it strange that Christian divines are 
so cautious in distinguishing between what they call the common 
and special operations of the same divine agent. Nor can I 
conceive the reason of the mighty danger they apprehend in 
allowing, that a sinner may be sometimes under divine influ- 
ences, and may in some measure comply with them, before the 
moment of his regeneration ; or that God may oblige himself, 
by his own gracious promise, to hear and answer those cries 
and groans, which are excited by his own spirit.* Does it not 

* You ssy, in your last letter, that " while men think they are doing that 
which does lav Go»*l under obligations, even though it he by his own gracious ap- 
pointment, they will never be those humble souls that submit to and receive the 
grace of the gospel/' — I humbly hope, my dear Sir, that you dropped this un- 
charitable sentence inadvertently. A sentence by which all persons of my senti- 
ments, Arminians, Jlfethodists, and others, are cut off from all possibility of ever 
submitting to or embracing the gospel salvation. Let me put only this single 
ease to your charity. The Rev. Mr. John JVesley and brother, are supposed at 
this time to have under them not less than 500 preachers, in England, Ireland, 
and Scotland. By a modest computation then, there are not fewer than 60,000 
Wesleans in these three kingdoms, all zealous of Mr. Wesley's peculiar- tenets, 
and yet, in a judgment of charity, generally very pious and devout men, abound- 
ing in the visible fruits of godliness. All these men as Wesleans, hold the senti- 
ment here advanced, and are in all respects much more Arnunians in opinion 
than I am; — and yet will you venture to suppose, that not one sonl of these 
60,000 persons is " such an bumble soul as h;<th received and submitted to the 
grace of the gospel ; or, as hath ever, in a right manner, submitted to God's 
method of salvation."— -I know you will not. The chief ground for charity to 
Arminians from Calvinists, goes upon a favourable supposition that their hearts 
may be better than their heads; or, that while they plead for Arminian doc- 
trines, they may be tinctured with Calvinistic principles. But I imagine this 
will be found too dubious a foundation whereon to build the noble structure of 



on Free Willy Divine Decrees, 41 

sufficiently secure the whole honour of our salvation to God, 
as his own proper work, to believe and be persuaded that 
corrupt man can do nothing spiritually good of himself ; no- 
thing acceptable to God without the influences of his sanctifv- 
ing spirit ; — that all his endeavours, so far as they are properly 
his, are of no account, of no avail with God, but are, and 
must be wholly displeasing to him ; u being no other than the 
exertions of that carnal mind, which is enmity against God 
and that even when God first works, freely and graciously 
works upon the soul, the good things which the sinner does in 
consequence of such operation, have in them no proper merit 
to oblige God ; being not the sinnefs own, but God's and 
that whatever promises God makes to these exercises, are, if I 
may so speak, unobliged, unconstrained, unmerited 'by the sin- 
ner, and arising purely and wholly from God's own merciful 
nature ? Yet these exercises, partaking of the nature of holi- 
ness, and being the fruits and effects of holy influences, there 
is a congruity and fitness in supposing that God should favour- 
ably regard them, and encourage and reward them by farther 
degrees of his grace and favour ; according to that gospel de- 
claration — unto him that hath shall be given. 

Nor can I conceive any merit (which can render this doc- 
trine suspected or frightful, as though it tended to depreciate 
free grace, and exalt human merit) in complying with an exter- 
nal force or impression ; or in being led where the spirit gently 
draws ; or in not resisting an impression to the utmost of our 
power ; — though I can conceive a great deal of demerit and 
guilt in continuing to resist, oppose, grieve, and quench the 
same divine agent who would seal sinners to the day of re- 
demption. What divines call a law-tvork, or a preparatory 
work to conversion, supposes that the Holy Spirit is thus some- 
times very long at work on the hearts of sinners ; and the va- 
rious steps of this work which experienced Christians have de- 
scribed seem to prove that they have, in some respects, com- 
plied with his operations, before the happy moment of regene- 
ration, when he took a full and abiding possession of their 

Christian charity: since as the head is, upon solid scriptural conviction, such 
will the heart and principles be. So that, if we cannot have charity for a man's 
principles, I can see no reason why we ought to have it for his person. The 
whole scheme of Arminian principles I never could, and I believe, never shall 
adopt; yet I dare not exclude a man of these principles from my charity. 



42 Letter of the Rev, H, Knox to the Rev, J, Green, 

souls. If the character described, Rom. vii. is, as many have 
supposed, thar of an unregenerate man, first ignorant of the 
law, and then enlightened and convicted bv it, and continuing 
under a legal spirit of bondage, until at length he is regenerated 
and transported with the discovery of gospel grace and libertv, 
it will Fully confirm the truth of the opinion I plead for. We 
may surely discover somj marks of real grace in that charac- 
ter ; such as " an approbation of the law of God, as holv, 
just, good, and spiritual ; a delight in it, after the inward man; 
a will to good, and the like — yet this very person declares 
that he is carnal, sold wider sin ; that in his flesh dwelleth no 
good thing" — md complains — 0 wretched man that lam, who 
shall deliver me from t/ie body of this death ! 

If we suppose that there are no promises of grace made to 
the unregenerate, it would seem to follow that thev have no en- 
couragement to seek grace, nor to use any means for obtaining 
it ; more especially if what Mr. Hopkins savs be true, " that 
all such m^ans necessarily make sinners zvorse and more guilty, 
before conversion ;* and the best thing that unconverted sin- 
ners can do, on this supposition, seems to be, to neglect all 
means of obtaining conversion, as needless, yea, hurtful, and 
wait with folded hands the moment of regeneration ; confident 
that God will provide food and nourishment for his children 
as soon as they are born. This sounds like Sandimanism, and 
contradicts those express commands to unconverted sinners— 
strive to enter in at the strait gate — turn ye, turn ye — cast 
away from you all your transgressions, and make you a new 
heart — repent ye therefore, and be converted" &c. Sure these 
commands to unconverted sinners implv something that they - 
may be enabled to do, and ought to do, in order to the end 
proposed ; and which if they do, they have reason to hope for 
success. If it be said that these commands are sufficient en-? , 
courage ment to put sinners upon the use of means, I answer, 
a command to perform a duty can give no encouragement to 
attempt it, unless the person commanded be either supposed to 
have power to perform it, or has a promise of help and assist* 
ance if he attempts it. Whereas it is supposed, in the present 
case, that the persons commanded are not only without any 

* Sermons on the knowledge o( the law aad regeneration. Pages 54, &c. 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &?c. 43 

power to perform the commanded duty ; but that even their 
attempts and endeavours to obtain this power from anothe r must 
necessarily render them the more guilty and sinful ; that is^ 
must remove them farther from this power than ever. It would 
follow then, that God, by enjoining these commands upon un- 
regenerate sinners, sets them upon the certain means of increas- 
ing their guilt and condemnation. 

The command of a superior cannot be deemed equitable, 
where the commanded inferior has not a power of obeying; un- 
less such inferior has criminally lost this power, by his own 
fault. Wherefore all God's commands to his impotent crea- 
tures implv a promise of assistance to all who ask it, and at- 
tempt obedience in consequence ; otherwise his commands 
would not be equitable. To illustrate this give me leave to put 
the following case. You are a master, and have a number of 
slaves, who, being your property, are subject to all your lawful 
commands. You say to one go, and he goeth ; to another 
come, and he cometh, &c. Among these your slaves are a father 
and a son. The father breaketh the son's leg. Knowing the 
accident, you repair to the lame young slave, and lay vour au- 
thoritative command on him to go on an errand. The slave an- 
swers, " I cannot, master, my father has broken my leg." To 
this you reply, " I have not lost my right of commanding, be- 
cause you have lost your power of obeying — -you ought not to 
have become impotent — the command is lawful in itself — it is 
fit and right that a slave should do his master's errands; where- 
fore go directlv whither I command you, or you shall be se- 
verely chastised." To this the impotent lad — True, master, 
the command may be right in itself, but to me it is impossi- 
ble. I prav, have my leg cured, or get me a wooden leg, 
or let one assist me, and I will go whither thou command est." 
— Would we deem such a command equitable without such as- 
sistance ? How m ich less so still, could we suppose the master 
so to have ordered, appointed, and predisposed things, as that 
the father must necessarily and unavoidably - break his son's leg; 
and that to illustrate some dispositions of his, which he would 
have made known to the whole famiiv? — Promises of assist- 
ance are, therefore, necessarily implied in all God's commands 
to unregenerate sinners of Adam's race. 

Encouragement and hope must be founded on some divine 



44 Letter of the Rev, H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

promise or declaration. God must cause us to hope, or we can 
have no ground to encourage us to hope ; and the ground of 
this hope must be his word. If then there be no ground of 
hope in God's word to encourage the prayers and endeavours 
of unregenerate sinners, they can have no encouragement either 
to pray or endeavour; — not even to say, u Lord be merciful to 
'me a sinner;^— or, help, Lord, else I perish" — You say, "you 
are a poor unrenewed sinner," and ask, u what you shall do?" 
I tell you to pray for a new heart, to pray for the regenerating 
grace of God, and to be found in the diligent use of all the 
appointed means' of grace. " To what purpose pray, say you ; 
God hath never promised to hear or answer the prayers of an 
unregenerate sinner : he cannot : it is inconsistent : besides, all 
my endeavours to enter in at the strait gate are not only una- 
vailable, but also offensive to God, and will only aggravate my 
guilt."-— Suppose, my dear Sir, that one of the sinners of your 
congregation should thus address you; would you not instantly 
set him upon praying, striving, and endeavouring, with hope 
of success in the use of means ? — Would you not show him the 
grounds of a sinner's hope, from the word of God? Would you 
not more particularly point out to him ihose cheering and ex- 
hilarating words of the Lord Jesus, so well adapted to such 
a case as his (Luke xi. 9 — 13), I say unto you, ask, and it 
shall be given you : seek, and ye shall fnd: knock, and it shall 
he opened unto you. For every one that asketh receiveth : and 
he that seeketh findeth : and to him that knocketh, it shall be 
opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, 
will he give him a stone ? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish 
give him a serpent ? or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him 
a scorpion f If ye then, being evil, know horv to give good gifts 
unto your children; how much more shall your heavenly Father 
give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him ? In the illustration 
of which fine and comfortable passages of scripture, I beg leave 
to borrow the words of a pious, amiable and reputedly orthodox 
divine, who, by the bye, is no friend to Arminian principles. 
a All who enjoy the gospel have reason to expect the neces- 
sary assistance of the spirit. Our heavenly Father xvill give the 
Holy Spirit to them that ask him ; — to all that ask him. Luke 
xi. 13. Nor must it be said, that we can't ask aright. No 
doubt we are capable of such asking as is required, and made 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &?c\ 45 

the condition of our receiving ; otherwise here was a promise, 
and no promise ; a promise to make us despair, rather than en- 
courage us. I don't pretend to solve all difficulties here ; but 
the notions God has taught us to entertain of himself, of his 
justice, wisdom, mercy and goodness ; the declarations he has 
made of himself in his word, assure us that he will not, does 
not, lay our salvation upon things absolutely out of our own 
reach. Whatever weakness, impotency and inability we are 
under by reason of the fall, a sufficient remedy is provided 
through a Mediator. And when God has appointed us so 
many duties, all tending to our advantage, and promised to as- 
sist us therein, and to give his Holy Spirit to them that ask 
him, we must conclude these duties are possible, and that the 
necessary assistance shall not be denied ; otherwise we make 
him a hard master, reaping where he has not sozun, and gather- 
ing what he has not strozved. In short, none shall perish for 
want of necessary assistance on God's part: none can justly 
say, though they sinned, they could not help it ; — nor shall be 
able to say in hell, that though they are damned, they could not 
help it. Such a plea would afford a relief the place of torment 
does not admit of ; would cool the tongues of the damned, and, 
in a great measure, quench the flames of the burning lake. All 
there will be convinced that God was real, not only in his 
threatnings, but also in his promises of grace and help. And 
this conviction will render them utterly defenceless, fill them 
with silent horror ; and, when under the just sentence of God, 
leave them for ever speechless. Matt. xxii. 12."^ 

I now come briefly to consider the three concluding ques- 
tions of your last letter. 

®>uest. 1. " Why do some persons think the Calvinistic doc- 
trine consistent with a God of* infinite love, &c. and others the 
contrary ? — What is the reason why persons of equal capacity" 
(I should have liked the question much better if you had added, 
and of equal piety too) " have such different sentiments respect- 
ing the divine nature I answer in brief (if you allow of the 
addition inserted in the parenthesis, and I think your charity 
must allow it) — Because this difference of sentiments, in 
these deep) abstruse, metaphysical matters, is a much less es- 

* Bennefs Christian Oratory, edit. 4. vol. i, p, 380. 
7 



46 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green, 

sential matter than we make it to be. Men, by poring long 
on one scheme of thought, get so in love with it, and contract 
such a high sense of its importance, that they imagine truth 
must stand or fall with their beloved hypothesis. There is a 
bewitching pleasure in excogitating schemes, linking them to- 
gether, and bringing them into form : and every man, or set of 
men are generally so attached to their own favourite scheme, 
that they are too apt to think that they alone have the truth ; 
and that all others are wrong, very wrong, so far as they differ 
from them : — as in proportion to their zeal for what they sup- 
pose to be important truth, and the measure in which they have 
wrought themselves up into the love and admiration of their 
own favourite system ; in the same proportion they will be 
zealous against all other systems, and will imagine them de- 
structive of all true religion. Men of enlarged minds and uni- 
versal reading cannot help seeing this truth but too clearly ; and 
racks, tortures, inquisitions, and persecutions, are some of 
the sad fruits of this narrow, engrossing, anti-catholic spirit. 
Whereas, if the good God saw this diversity of sentiment in 
these matters to be so very essential and important as we make 
it to be, he would certainly unite all his saints, and make them 
of one mind in these things ; and would by no means suffer 
those who love and serve him with all their hearts, and with 
the truest zeal, to continue under such absurd, atheistical, and 
. blasphemous errors, as we affect to call them. 

Of three men, equally intelligent, equally learned, equally 
pious, one is a thorough Cahinist, another a moderate Calvinist, 
and the third yet more of an Arminian. What is the reason I 
— why, these men have been accustomed from their infancy to 
read different authors, to hear ^nd converse with men of dif- 
ferent principles ; and have been led to weigh and consider at- 
tentively different difficulties in religion ; and hence (as well as 
from a number of other supposeable causes and motives) have 
been led to form to themselves different schemes of religion ; 
yet all of them perfectly agree (yea, must agree) in every thing 
truly essential. 

If I might be allowed to enlarge a little farther upon a sub - 
ject, the abuse or misunderstanding of which, if I mistake not, 
has been the source of all uncharitableness among Christian 
brethren, I would hazard and endeavour to support and illus- 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, &e. 4>7 

trate the following conjecture, viz. That error in opinion is 
unavoidable by man in the present state ; and, so far as it is so, 
must be innocent. — Although truth is but one, that is, but one 
of 10,000 different opinions concerning one object of knowledge, 
can be the true opinion; yet the objects of knowledge are next 
to infinite in their number. God, knowing himself, his per- 
fections and works, has a perfect, unerring comprehension of 
all truth. But a very few objects of knowledge are revealed to 
men ; and even amongst these many are too large for their 
limited capacities, and can be viewed by them only superficially, 
in part, and, as it were, by peacemeal. Among men also 
there is a great diversity of capacities, opportunities, and ad- 
vantages for discovering and discerning truth. Hence it hap- 
pens that different men are led to view the same object of know- 
ledge in the different parts of it, and with different degrees of 
advantage. No man ever saw, or ever can see even all know- 
able truths in their full extent, and in the proper connection 
with each other, and dependence on each other. Hence it ap- 
pears demonstrably, from the very nature of human infirmity 
and imperfection, that men must err in some respect or degree ; 
and the more objects of speculation the human understanding 
is employed about, and the more sublime and incomprehensi- 
ble these objects are in themselves, in the more instances it is 
still liable to err : in other words, errors are, as it were, ne- 
cessarily multiplied by an increase of knowledge. Hence it 
will also follow, that as religion lays before the human un- 
derstanding the sublimest speculations and the most incompre- 
hensible objects, men will be more liable to error in their reli- 
gious opinions than in any other. If it be said that divine re- 
velation affords a sufficient remedy against error in religious 
opinions, as it exhibits a perfect and unerring rule of faith ; I 
grant that this is strictly true, with regard to all those truths or 
objects of knowledge which are essentially necessary in order to 
the duty and salvation of sinners ; otherwise divine revelation 
would be by no means adequate to the purpose for which it 
was given : — but that it is not equally true with regard to mul- 
titudes of unessential matters, which nevertheless are deemed 
objects of religious knowledge, and subjects of religious specu- 
lation, is abundantly evident from the differences of opinion 
among the best of men about these matters, in every succeed- 



48 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green^ 

ing age of the Christian Church. It is of the nature of the 
human mind to be active, curious, and inquisitive ; and an in- 
crease of knowledge sharpens the appetite of the mind : in 
plainer words ; " the more we know, the more we desire to 
know." And there is no limits to this appetite : not satisfied 
with plain wholesome food ; not satisfied with plain necessary 
truths that are clearly revealed, our curiosity and thirst of 
knowledge lead us to attempt the knowledge of the most diffi- 
cult and incomprehensible matters ; and that too in all their 
causes, reasons, effects, and various bearings and dependencies. 
This is not all; the human mind is delighted with beauty, sym- 
metry, order, and proportion. It delights to arrange its ideas, 
and to make out and see the connection between truths; or how 
one truth depends on another. Hence the fondness for theo- 
ries ; for schemes or systems of truth. Now, from what has 
been said above of the imperfection of human knowledge, in 
sing le and particular objects, it will follow that men will be 
vastly more liable to err in schemes or systems of doctrines, 
where so much depends on the due connection of truths, than 
in any single, detached object of knowledge whatever. Yet 
men must have their systems, and consequently they wmst err. 
None but God, who knows all things in their natures, bearings, 
and dependencies, can make a system of truth free from all 
error. The Bible does not lay down divine truths systemati- 
cally, and thereby seems to teach us that systems are not abso- 
lutely necessary for us : every man, therefore, if he will have 
a system, must arrange divine truths as well as he can, for 
himself. If it were to be narrowly inspected into, I am per- 
suaded it would appear, that no tivo men upon earth have the 
same system of religious sentiments throughout ; nor could 
conscientiously adopt and subscribe, in the same sense, any long 
set of religious articles : Therefore no one human system of 
religion can be right throughout. But such errors as neces- 
sarily arise from the infirmity and imperfection of the human 
mind, are certainly innocent. God, for wise and good pur- 
poses, permits these errors to take place ; and is doubtless even 
glorified by these unessential differences of opinion ; which, if de- 
bated with charity, candour, and moderation, are perhaps a pro- 
fitable exercise of virtue, knowledge, genius, and diligence. 
While you, for instance, plead for the sovereignty of God. 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, £s?c. 49 

according to your view of it, you mean to exalt the divine glory 
without intending any prejudice to the divine justice and good- 
ness. While I plead for the justice, mercy, and benevolence of 
God, according to my view of them, I mean to exalt the divine 
glory, without intending any prejudice to his sovereign inde- 
pendency. If I adopted your scheme without your ideas of the 
divine sovereignty, I should injure God in my heart, by think- 
ing unworthily of him. If you adopted my scheme through- 
out, without my ideas of the divine justice, mercy, and bene- 
volence, you would probably dishonour and offend the Most 
High in the same manner. Our ideas of these divine perfec- 
tions must be radically changed before we could, with a good 
conscience, come wholly over to each other. Both of us, doubt- 
less, err in some parts of our respective systems ; yet both of 
us may be right in honestly endeavouring to promote the glory 
of God, according to our best view of things. Both of us, 
therefore, may be pleasing and honouring God to the best of 
our ability, and may be therefore accepted of him, and ought 
to exercise mutual charity to each other. If we cannot 
change one another's ideas in these matters, we cannot, salvd 
conscientid, come over the whole way, one to the other. If we 
are honest, and yet, in any thing essential err, God will, doubt- 
less, show it unto us. If our errors are unessential, God may 
leave us in them till death, and bring us together in the future 
world, where we shall know, and harmonize in the true system 
in its full extent. 

When I conceive of the great God, and suffer my mind to 
dwell upon him but for a moment, I conceive of him as the 
most just, holy, amiable, and every way adorable Being : and 
when I would conceive of his exhibition of himself to his crea- 
tures, in his works of creation, providence, and redemption, I 
conceive of him as acting every way worthy o f himself*— When, 
therefore, I would attempt to adopt a scheme of thought concern- 
ing his operations ad extra, and the plan of these operations as 
formed in his all-comprehensive mind before their coming into 
existence, I would incline to choose that which, upon the whole, 
seemed best to comport with my highest and most exalted idea 
of his moral character* Wherever any thing, in any scheme, 
seems to clash with this idea, or contradict it, I immediately re- 
ject this system, by whatever authorities supported j — not that I 



50 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green. 

dare absolutely condemn such a scheme as false and fundament' 
ally erroneous — seeing the error may lie in my own conceptions 
and reasonings ; but in present circumstances I must reject it, 
however true ; because, to my apprehensions, it is inconsistent 
with infinite moral rectitude and excellence. So that, before 
I dare conscientiously adopt such a scheme, either my idea of 
moral excellence must be altered, or my reasonings from this 
idea rectified— in short, I must be convinced of error. 

Quest. 2. Does God's foreknowledge depend on his decree; 
" or his decree upon his prescience ?" — Ans. I do not know 
that the holy scriptures are decisive on this nice, metaphvsica! 
speculation. Known unto God are all his works from the be- 
gmning of the world. Whom he foreknew, them he also pre- 
destinated, &c— -Might I dare to give my opinion of this matter, 
I would venture to say that, perhaps, in some instances, God's 
foreknowledge may go before his decree ; and that, in other 
respects, his decree may be supposed, in the order of nature, 
before his foreknowledge. I am loath to use the word depend 
upon this occasion. Besides, there is such an unity and simplicity 
in all the internal acts and operations of the Deity, that we 
are in danger of falling into very erroneous blunders when we 
go about to distinguish them. However, as it is in some re- 
spects necessary, in order to help our conceptions of things, to 
consider understanding and will as two distinct faculties in the 
divine Being, and to distinguish between the acts and exercises 
of these two faculties ; I think I can conceive of the Most 
High as first willing and decreeing to make an universe, in- 
habited by such and such ranks and orders of created beings, 
and designing his own glory and the greatest good of his crea- 
tures in so doing. I can then conceive of him as fore-seeing and 
fore-knowing what course such creatures would take, according 
to their respective natures, liberty, and circumstances. And 
then I can conceive of a subsequent decree to over-rule, govern, 
and direct the free actions and volitions of these creatures, so as 
that in the issue they may be made to subserve the purposes 
of his own glory, and the greatest possible good of the system. 
But indeed, my dear Sir, these are speculations so very 
high and bold, that the less we meddle with them, the less risk 
we shall run of speaking presumptuously, and of darkening 
eowtctl by words without ideas. Job xxxviii. 2. 



on Free Wilt, Divine Decrees, &c. 



51 



^ttest, 3. " If God should now create one or more moral 
agents, with all the freedom that ever creature had, and put 
them into a state of trial, so as to leave them in the greatest 
equilibrium, could he foresee how these creatures would acquit 
themselves Ans. Yes, certainly ; otherwise his prescience, 
and consequently his knowledge, could not be infinite. I am 
not Socinian enough to deny the infinite and most perfect pre- 
science of him whose understanding is infinite; the only wise 
God : — I think the fulfilment of prophecy, with regard to the 
volitions and actions of creatures whom I take to be in a state 
of proper moral agency, furnishes an irrefragable proof of this 
truth. Although the quomodo of this prescience is too high for 
me; I cannot attain it; yet I do not entertain the least doubt of 
it. I conceive that God made Adam thus j yet did he foresee 
his fall, and had a remedy in store before the foundation of the 
world. Nor can I guess what concession you would draw from 
me by this query ; or what use you would make of it against 
my principles. I believe God so perfectly knows the natures 
of free agents, and the circumstances they are in, and what 
effect these circumstances will have upon them, as perfectly 
and unerringly to know the course they will take in conse™ 
quence ; while (which makes the grand difficulty in conceiving 
of this prescience) he knows at the same time, that they had it 
in their power to have taken a different course, and that in 
many instances they ought to have done so. As, therefore, 
this kind of foreknowledge has no manner of influence upon 
the conduct of such free agents, I believe that God may be per- 
fectly justifiable in not interfering to prevent their taking the 
wrong course, which he foreknew they would take. Will you 
say that God's making such creatures, and putting them into 
such circumstances as he foresaw would tempt and prevail with 
them to apostatize, and giving them such a liberty as he fore- 
knew they would abuse ; is making their fall and apostacy as 
necessary as any positive decree, or chain of external motives 
whatever could have done ; — and that, therefore, in the issue, 
my scheme will come to the very same thing with yours, and 
that of the most rigid Calvinists? — I think, not at all The * 
scheme of rigid Calvinists (if I understand it) supposes a causal 
necessity ; mine only a consequential one. I cannot think of 
an event positively decreed, and brought to pass by prevailing 



32 Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J* Green, 

external motives; but I must think of that event as brought into 
existence by a necessity of influence and coaction ; that is, by 
a fatal necessity. But when, upon my scheme, I consider God 
as putting a free agent into circumstances of trial, in which he 
foresaw he would abuse his liberty, while he was endued with 
a sufficient power to have made a glorious use of it, and to have 
acquitted himself well in his trial ; I can see nothing in this 
state of the case, whereby God can be in the least chargeable 
with the fall or apostacy of such a free agent. The simple 
prescience of God can have no manner of influence on this 
event. The thing happened, indeed, just as God foresaw that 
it would ; but it happened wholly by the fault of the creature, 
and in the nature of things it might not have happened. It did 
not happen because God foresaw it; but God foresaw it, be- 
cause it rvould happen. I know it is scarce possible to speak 
on this subject with such clearness and precision, as to guard 
against the attacks of a subtle opponent ; yet I think I have 
pretty clear ideas of a wide difference between my scheme and 
that which I oppugn. — But, be this as it will, it is God's provi- 
dential dealings towards the unhappy, corrupt offspring of such 
offenders, who never abused this kind of liberty, nor properly, 
that is, personally demerited the divine displeasure, which I am 
concerned to vindicate against the principles of thorough Cal- 
vinists. Suppose such delinquents to be spared, and permitted 
to propagate their own kind, and replenish the earth with a 
corrupt, helpless, miserable progeny; the question with me is, 
How k becomes a God of infinite potver, -wisdom, justice, be- 
nevolence, holiness, and mercy, to deal with such his corrupt, 
helpless, miserable creatures ? ' 

Thus you see, my dear Sir, how largely and freely I have 
opened my whole soul before you, with all its errors, weak- 
nesses, and infirmities. I have said, and I would have you to 
bear it in mind, that I have done it in the humble capacity of 
a learner, seeking the truth, and desirous to embrace it. If I 
am wrong, pity me, instruct and correct me, but do not exclude 
me from your charity. Believe me, at least, to be actuated by 
simplicity and undissembled sincerity in this exposition of my 
sentiments and doubts. I would not have thus opened and re- 
tailed myself but to a friend — a candid, generous, intelligent, 
Christian friend* Bigots would anathematize me for these 



on Free Will, Divine Decrees, 53 

sentiments ; but you, Sir, have more sense and more candour. 
Your mind has been long conversant about these speculations : 
you well know their depth, and how difficult it is to form a right 
judgment upon them; and, therefore, can have charity for 
those who are puzzled and perplexed in search of truth, through 
these aerial regions of metaphysical speculation. It is the 
happy privilege of those only who never thought deeply or 
freely about these matters, to find no difficulty in understanding 
them. Inquisitive, thoughtful men, who have knocked off the 
trammels of early prejudice, see a thousand perplexing dif- 
ficulties where dull plodders on a system see all things plain 
and easy, all truth and demonstration, — Nor would even these 
good qualities in you have induced me to have been thus cir- 
cumstantial and undisguised, were I not in hopes thereby of 

drawing from you, or the Rev. Mr. (to whom, with my 

love, I give you liberty to communicate this hasty, incorrect 
scrawl) a farther explanation of your scheme, and some solid 
answers to my objections against it. 

But now, that this letter is about to be submitted to the pub- 
lic, the author foresees, without the spirit of prophecy, that he 
is like to procure himself abundance of enemies. Bigots among 
the Calvinists will call him an Arminian ; and with them there 
is little difference between an Arminian, an heretic, and a devil. 
Arminians, on the other hand, will disclaim him, as too much 
a Calvinist; and with them there is little difference between a 
Calvinist and an ideot. As to those poor narrow souls of both 
sides who confine religion to a party, and who imagine thztpiety 
and good sense are their own property exclusively ; the author, 
knowing them to be short-sighted, pities them, and holds their 
censure in contempt. He is much more concerned lest he 
should incur the displeasure of his brethren (whose judgment 
he venerates and respects, and whose persons he loves with the 
truest affection) by the boldness and freedo?n of some of his sen- 
timents. He has reason, however, to hope that his apology 
for this will be deemed satisfactory. Be this as it may, the die 
is now cast ; and after the maturest deliberation, he judges it 
best upon the whole to publish the letter. 

¥ * * * * * * * * 

You will perceive that I have observed little or no method 

8 



J4. Letter of the Rev. H. Knox to the Rev. J. Green. 

in this letter, but have negligently and immethodically followed 
the train of my thoughts, wherever they have led me. I would 
not, however, wish you to imitate me in this. My difficulties 
may be arranged under a very few heads, and distinctly an- 
swered; which will save much labour, while, at the same time, 
It will be more useful and edifying to, 

Reverend and dear Sir, 

Your very affectionate Brother 
and obedient Servant, 

HUGH KNOX* 

Saba, June 26, 1770. 



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